Summary:

The doctor-speaker wonders about a recently diagnosed male leukemia patient: what will Mr. Claridge, who used to think of himself as a ladies' man, dream of now, after the diagnosis? In the final image the doctor-speaker imagines the sleep of his secretary, to whom Mr. Claridge had given a bottle of Nuit d'Amour perfume," her arms crossed like a nun's" and surrounded by the flowery scent of the perfume.

View full annotation

Summary:

This poem of ten short lines focuses on the immediacy and surprise of an arm breaking "like a tree branch / the green bones sprung like the tines of a fork."

View full annotation

Summary:

Beginning with its epigraph ("Some patients who have been resuscitated request that they not be rescued should they die again"), this poem explores several points along the boundary between life and death. The male subject is giving mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration to a female training dummy with "an ample chest."

After a while he notices the similarity of his motions to those of "the little death" (a euphemism for sexual climax). For all that, he tires and "she" "dies"--i.e., the tape (a cardiogram?) issuing from her side stops unwinding. When he tries to get up, he discovers that his leg is asleep, which prompts a final musing on the experience of being just about to die.

View full annotation

Summary:

Whether he is bringing to life the farmers in Grant Wood's "American Gothic," or revealing the pain of losing his wife (The Lu Poems), John Stone's work always hits the mark. This collection revolves around themes as varied as music, family, the wonder and horror of being alive in the world, and Stone's own sleep disorder. There are few poems specifically about medicine: "Transplant," "While Watching His Own Electrocardiogram He Welcomes in the New Year," and "Coming Down from Prozac."

View full annotation

Summary:

Stone presents a poem that celebrates love and life with poignancy and irreverence. At Christmas time, when it is cold and dark, a father peers past the "tops of pines" still trying to reach for stars and moves from the holiness of the moment to the sons asleep in the house, unaware in their dreams of boyhood things, "how fast we are all dying." Remembering another holy moment, when a child was born in a stable midst "cattle urine rising like steam," the father expresses his overwhelming feelings for life in a joyfully unexpected way: "I pee for joy."

View full annotation