Summary:

This is a collection of humorous and insightful verse inspired by scientific articles published in medical journals, such as Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. Pollycove is a "literary persona" who practiced internal medicine in rural Iowa for 30 years and "died from an acute coronary occlusion in October, 1990." This, according to the Introduction written by Pollycove's alter-ego, H. J. Van Peenen, an internist and pathologist who retired from academic pathology in 1990 and the publisher of this collection. Excerpts from the original articles alternate in the book with the poems that they inspired. The Literature is available from Goatfoot Press, 3910 Courtney Lane S.E., Salem, Oregon 97302.

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Several of these poems deal with pregnancy and childbirth. “The Womb Is the Body's Most Powerful Muscle” celebrates a woman's knowledge of her own body just before she gives birth. In “The Birthing Room” Krysl describes the pulse and atmosphere of a midwife-attended birth. “Midwife” is an ecstatic poem about the power and “connection” of midwifery. Other poems in this collection take an ironic, comic view of the human condition (“Feet,” “Skin”), or reflect on issues of human dignity in the health care setting (“Quadriplegic: the Bath,” “Burn Patient”).

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David Moolten's poems demonstrate the medical (and poetic) virtues of simplicity, clarity, skillful observation, and attention to meaningful detail. They reveal and transform the poet's experience--from "a brief Christmas display / Of bells and lights" when he feels the silence of his father's joy "as I pull out the Lionel / Strangled with tinsel . . . " ("Freight"), through a call from the rehabilitation hospital during which his shattered brother "cried like static into the phone" ("'Cuda"), to "The Night" in which the poet stares through the window of memory at his and his wife's younger selves and tries "to whisper in their ears / They don't know where they're going" as they "lean into each other / Like two hands shielding a small flame . . . . " Among the other particularly appealing poems in this collection are "Chemistry Set," Motorcycle Ward (see this database), "Voyeur," "1968," and "Omission."

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This is the fifth, and final, collection of poems by the surgeon-poet, George S. Bascom, who practiced for over 35 years in Manhattan, Kansas. The poems cover a wide range of topics in a variety of forms, ranging from free verse to sonnet. Many of them are concerned with the poet's medical experiences, both as physician and as patient. The poems arising from Bascom's own illness with prostate cancer are among the most effective in the book; these include, among others, "Operation," "Carpe Diem," "I With My Death," "Notice," "Metastatic Disease," "Progression," and "Medicine Circle." "Gloris," "Post Op," "7-2-59," and "Lydia" are fine evocations of patients and patient care.

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The poems in this collection celebrate many of the patients Dr. Schiedermayer has encountered in his practice, and what they have taught him. Most of the poems are vignettes of patients or narratives of medical encounters. The poet begins by "rummaging / with my hand / at the bottom" of his medical bag ("Black Bag"); he needs something more than the usual instruments. He writes wryly about Ricky ("Skin for Ricky"), a 30 year old man with cerebral palsy, who has normal human desires and aspirations; and compassionately about "A Poet Benefactor," who is suffering from breast cancer.

As Dr. Schiedermayer notes in "Amputation," his first serious lesson in medicine is "what you must lose." You must certainly lose a sense of invulnerability--but by becoming vulnerable to your patients' stories, you may also become a source of healing. In the end he gives thanks "for more love than I deserve."

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Many of the poems in this volume bring historical figures to life; these include figures as varied as "Wallace Stevens, Walking," "The Death of Shelley," "Rembrandt's Head," "Immanuel Kant," and "David Hume and the Butterfly." Some, such as "The Miracle," "Dr. Beaumont's Miraculous Hole," and "The Corpse in the White House," focus on specifically "medical" aspects of history. Dr. Young also includes a number of poems that arise from his own experience as a practitioner; e.g. "The Rodeo Queen," "The Medusa," and "Night Call."

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This collection includes a number of poems that speak directly to healing and the medical experience; for example, "The Wound Man," "Blood of a Poet," "Carmelita," and "Alzheimer's Disease." Others bring the author's medical sensibility to totally different topics and experiences; for example, "Freud's London House," "Square One," "The Path Through the Irises," "To Anne Sexton's Analyst," and "Orienteering."

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In this collection of poems, the author details her descent into the hell of bipolar disorder and the re-integration of her life, thanks to lithium therapy. In "Other Lives" she describes herself as "mother of none, good friend to all, / who for no apparent reason, / tries to kill herself, twice." She writes angrily to the psychiatrist who misdiagnosed her and prescribed the wrong medication: "Your first mistake was to see me at all. / Your second, prescribing the Elavil." (in "Shocking Treatment") While she misses the productivity and "rush" of her hypomanic episodes, she realizes this is the price she has to pay to avoid another "two years of pain or nothing, numbness."

As the author's health improves, she cares for friends who are dying of AIDS and for the dying father of a friend: "I'm learning, as I nurse / my father that the worst / would be protection from / death's reality." (in "For Jean") The collection is interlaced with a series of poems called "Black Stones" in which the author encounters very directly the reality of death. In the last of these, she cries out the words of her friend Matthew who has just died: "Rika, dear friend, live and live and live!"

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Sea Creatures is Dr. Vernon Rowe's first collection and contains forty-eight poems divided into two sections: "Creatures of the Inland Seas" and "Out Far and In Deep." The poems are succinct and focused. Much of the imagery is derived from nature, as in the title poem, where the poet-neurologist-helicopter pilot likens his descent through the sky to a dive into a deep and ancient ocean. Poems in the first section are directly related to the poet's life as a physician; works such as "Paralyzed" "Brahms' First, First Movement" and "Wasted" are empathic portrayals of patients.

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The "four voices" of this collection are Lila, her grown daughters Jennie and Sarah, and Jennie's daughter, Kate, whom Sarah has raised as her own. Sarah is a potter, and she gathers the women of the family together each year for the "vigil" of the wood-kiln firing of the pots she and her assistants have made during the year.

What the voices reveal is the story of, in Gibson's words, "three generations in a family shaped by alcoholism"--that is, the alcoholism of Jennie and Sarah's father, who is now dying in a hospice. Each woman holds secrets, and they reveal the secrets to the reader and, slowly, to each other as the story unfolds--secrets about the death of Jennie and Sarah's brother, about Jennie and Sarah's relationship to Kate, and about Kate's pregnancy.

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