Vital signs: an aesthetics of the poetry of illness

Abstract

The work explores how language and its literary forms offer a series of ways to process the anguish of illness and investigates the rhetorical and aesthetic strategies used to communicate experiences that alienate patients not only from other people, but also from the self-image they had of themselves before the illnesses and the diagnosis. To do this, in addition to reviewing an essential bibliography on the subject, the author carries out an analytical reading of poetic texts by various authors such as Lila Zemborain, Orlando Mondragón, Leila Chatti, Mario Morquencho, José Watanabe, Victoria Guerrero, Teresa Orbegoso and Ana Castro. The essay is part of a larger project aimed at investigating why and how patients write.