Poetics of Depression and Asthma as a Trope

I don't know how long I have been living with the things like depression, asthma and poetry. All the three erupted with puberty I think. My poetry is poetry of a depressed man, an asthmatic and hence depressed and asthmatic in its own imaginative way.My poetics are the poetics of depression and my tropes are the tropes of suffocation.

I pressed the panic button when asthma went completely out of hand after October 2006 and I started thinking seriously about some alternative therapy like Pranayama, Ayurveda or something equally exotic. Actually I had lost faith in all these things long time back after trying them. But then I thought lets give them one more chance.

I even consulted a counceller and a psychotherapist. From past month or two I am on anti-depressants.It seemed that they were working but after a recent bout of asthma a week back, the things are bad. I feel so low that I dont feel like going out or even leaving my bed. I just want to be alone and probably I have not cried to my heart's content. And what's more, I don't feel like writing too. Which is really bad. Poetry helped me to survive and if I lose it, I don't know what to do and where to go.

The contemporary Marathi poetry scenario is quite dispiriting too. I feel hopeless after looking and participating in various so called `debates' and `controversies' over contemporary Marathi poetry. People's views about poetry areso so crude and simplistic that it has become impossible to reason with them. I feel I should not have started writing criticism in the first place and I feel I should not have got so involved with my contemporaries so much. They are bad influences on your creativity at times.

Yes. I have to write with absolutely no expectation of recognition or even a sensible response. I have to live with these things and get used to them, I think. The real test for any artist, and I hold that poet is an artist, is to live without any recognition, after all what else does any artist hope for in her or his life? To write with perfect hopelessless, thats the test of your integrity as a poet and appearing for this exam. If I clear this exam, I am a very good poet indeed.