Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Chapter 25 : Section One: The Poet As rRsk Taker by Dave Jaffe

      The Poet as Risk Taker; The Life of Susan Musgrave


    Susan Musgrave's life has taken many twists and turns. And at least twice she ended up with two men who were accused of crimes.
      Born in 1915 to a Canadian couple then living in California, Musgrave grew up on Vancouver Island. There, she won a poetry competition in the 1960's in Grade Eight. The subject of her poem? It told a story of how Jackie Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy's widow, visited her husband's grave at night.
     "Poetry stems from deep grief," Musgrave said many years later. "Or from falling in love. They're two sides of the same coin."
     A writer's work, Mugrave added, "has very little to do with her or him." Mugrave's poetry often has a sad confessional side to it. At the age of 14, not long after she won her first prize, Musgrave spent time in a mental institution. There she was visited by the poet Robin Skelton. "You're not mad," Skelton told her. "You're a poet."
     Musgrave has written many books of poetry, as well as non-fiction, children's literature and a cook book.
    Her marriages have put her in the public eye. She first married a lawyer who was defending in court, an accused drug smuggler, Paul Oscar Nelson. He was acquitted and Musgrave then married Nelson. Later she fell in love with Stephen Reid, a bank robber. Reid belonged to the infamous criminal 'Stopwatch' gang. After marrying Musgrave, Reid went back to robbing banks. His and Musgrave's life together was chronicled in the CBC series 'Life and Times'.
      "What is the robbing of banks compared to the founding of a bank?" one leftist asked. Society doesn't see things this way. Reid was caught and went back to prison. He was paroled in 20008. Mugrave now spends her time in Haida Gwai and Sidney on Vancouver Island. She continues to write poetry and prose works.
      "The legless man in the motel room next to me," she wrote in 1997,
      "Listens to country and western music.
       all night an endless song about going down
       on his knees for some faithless woman's love.
       I turn in bed thinking of you the day
       We thought our daughter had gone missing."
     
       Musgrave's life and writing dispute the idea held by many that Canada is a boring place filled with boring people. Her life and times have been filled with excitement.