Outlook

Booth, Philip

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack
  • Date of entry: Jun-26-1995

Summary

The patient is lying on the table under an x-ray machine. He observes carefully the details of the machine above him--the three cables, the "crayon’s nose-cone," the traces of the electric tape that once bound the darker cable to the others. Now it is held by "serrated plastic ties." Everything is ready to "look into / whatever’s next, whatever it is I’m in for." What will appear on the film does not appear outside "under plain old sky," where it is "just beginning to snow."

Commentary

A poem in a patient’s voice, spoken from that prolonged and clear moment of waiting before the body’s secrets become manifest and can no longer be denied. Soon, the weather will change, the patient’s world will become completely different, just as the outside world is covering with snow.

Miscellaneous

Copyright 1993, by author.

Primary Source

Articulations: The Body and Illness in Poetry

Publisher

Univ. of Iowa Press

Place Published

Iowa City, Iowa

Edition

1994

Editor

Jon Mukand