The Poet Unwound

Steve Punt explores the history of the spleen both as a medical organ and as a poetic metaphor and goes on a quest in search of the modern spleen and its poetic descendants. He talks to poets, medics and other spleen-users. He needs to find out if unhappy writing can survive the medical advance of the spleen. He meets the new miserablists who have inherited the vile and bile of the spleen lovers. He tries to investigate the true meaning of the ideas behind the spleen's traditional use. Is it, for example, physically possible to "vent your spleen"? And do the doctors think the poets of old were right to identify it as a source of their misery and anger? Why did that one organ above all others come to play such a crucial role in the most emotive and sensitive of writing?