The Literature of Prescription

Rita María Martínez, author of the poetry compilation The Jane & Bertha in Me, is one of the finalists in the Pen 2 Paper Creative Writing Competition organized by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities.
The poem, The Literature of Prescription, can be read here and contains references to Charlotte Brontë's migraines and Robert Southey's (in)famous advice, as you can read in this fragment.

(...) The poet laureate’s infamous advice reminiscent of Dr. Mitchell’s:
The daydreams in which you habitually indulge
are likely to induce a distempered state of mind,
& in proportion as “all the ordinary uses of the world”
seem to you “flat & unprofitable,” you will be unfitted
for them, without becoming fitted for anything else.

Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life,
& it ought not to be. The more she is engaged
in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it . . . .

Charlotte Perkins Gilman renounced the rest cure,
regained her wits, and wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.
Charlotte Brontë followed Southey’s fatherly admonition
selectively, writing as a means of soothing the mind
& elevating it— which is also what the poet prescribed.