Summary

A poem of five sonnets reflecting on the poet's discovery of an asymmetry in his breasts requiring a mammogram. The resultant diagnosis, gynecomastia, is the source of flippant "nervous humor," as McClatchy describes it in a section on the authors and their poems at the end of this anthology (pg. 265), followed at the end of the poem by a "darker, more serious meditation" (again in the poet's own words). The meditation is not so dark or abrupt that it undermines the poem's integrity.

Commentary

This poem affords an interesting change in viewpoint on a mammogram.

Primary Source

The Best American Poetry 1995

Publisher

Simon & Schuster: Touchstone

Place Published

New York

Edition

1995

Editor

Richard Howard & David Lehman