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Poets die young. That's the word from a California study that surveyed death rates among novelists, playwrights, poets, and nonfiction writers in the United States, China, Turkey, and Eastern Europe and concluded that poets definitely died at a younger age than other types of writers, reports Reuters.

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Why? Lead study author James Kaufman of the Learning Research Institute at California State University at San Bernardino says it could be because poets are tortured and prone to self-destruction. Or, it could be that many poets become famous at a young age, so their early deaths are noticed. "Among American, Chinese, and Turkish writers, poets died significantly younger than nonfiction writers," Kaufman wrote in the report published in the Journal of Death Studies. "Among the entire sample, poets died younger than both fiction writers and nonfiction writers."

Kaufman told Reuters that female poets were more likely than other types of writers to suffer from mental illness and be hospitalized, commit suicide, or attempt suicide. "I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect," he said. (Plath was a poet and novelist who committed suicide in 1963 at age 30.)