The Wall Street Journal:

The creative writing program at Michigan's Alma College had an interesting way of providing inspiration: take the writers to see cadavers.

Students who attended the voluntary excursions saw mostly older corpses in mid-dissection. Many stories inspired by the visits were about death, such as the poem titled "Dead": "Legs like meat/Chicken/I eat this for supper/It looks exactly the same/Except the bones are bigger/And the meat is more plentiful/Much more plentiful."

"The contrast of seeing dead bodies helped my students," says Prof. William Palmer. In 1992 he invited a writer to read from behind a cadaver that had been wheeled onstage. Says Palmer: "It was a beautiful, illuminating experience."

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