Summary:

What appear to be early-twentieth-century anatomical engravings of various body parts--eye, tongue, spine, breast, legs, foot, genitalia--accompany a male narrator's thoughts about his wife and their relationship. He describes the "good days" and "bad days" in their mundane life. He suspects that she may be having an affair and wonders if he should have one too. Her disturbing restlessness is felt "in [his] bones," but he avoids confronting it, hoping that they will continue happy.

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A woman describes the male body, beginning with the torso--neck, chest, belly, genitals--then the appendages, the back, and finally the head. Her description features the appearance and uses of these anatomical parts from the perspective of female taste and needs. The essay is illustrated with strategically placed images of the human form in exotic settings, taken from Bernard Siegfried Albinus's remarkable treatise of anatomy of the mid-eighteenth century.

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This story of one exceptionally accomplished family's discovery of their past and future relationships with Huntington's Disease (HD) is also the story of how the Wexler family changed the cultural narrative of HD for other families at risk for this genetically-transmitted and currently incurable disease. The HD diagnosis of Leonore Wexler (the author's mother) inspires Milton Wexler, a psychologist, to create a major foundation for HD research, which develops critical mass and influence as Leonore Wexler's condition deteriorates, and after her death. The book interweaves the story of the Wexlers' emotional and other negotiations with HD and the story of their efforts to create an HD community comprised of those with active symptoms of HD, family members, advocates, and researchers.

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Save me / from love affairs / with the pale-green neutral cast of money. / Give me the hue and cry / of words! ("Lime Green") In these poems Ron Charach's love affairs with words are warm, poignant, witty, and wise--none of them have that "neutral cast of money." The poet's topics range from childhood and adolescent experiences to poetry readings, and from "Freud's Face" to "Prostates Growing."

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Henry Moss is a medical geneticist specializing in Hickman syndrome, a fictitious disease resembling progeria. Children with Hickman syndrome experience premature aging and invariably die before the age of twenty. The physician meets Thomas Benhamouda, a teenager who genetically has Hickman syndrome but astonishingly has no physical manifestations of the disease. Dr. Moss identifies a protein that "corrects" Hickman syndrome in the blood of Thomas and proceeds to synthesize it.

Dr. Moss violates medical ethics by administering the experimental enzyme to his favorite Hickman patient, William Durbin, a dying 14-year-old boy. It is a last-ditch effort to save William's life even though the substance has not been tested for safety or efficacy in human beings. Dr. Moss also injects himself with the enzyme. He realizes the tremendous potential the drug has not only in curing Hickman syndrome but also in extending longevity in normal individuals. He is well aware of the great financial rewards he might reap from his discovery.

After a series of injections, William's deteriorating health stabilizes and even improves but he dies in his home. Dr. Moss has failed to save the doomed boy but in the process of breaking the rules and risking his career has learned how to understand and appreciate his own life as well as reconnect with his family.

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This long poem in 20 sections seeks to explore, dissect, and create a language for the experience of hemophilia. "Blood pools in a joint / The limb locks . . . " The poet first dissects words like "trans / fusion" and "hema / toma," and showers the reader with images (like splatters of blood?).

In section 5 he states his purpose in the familiar jargon of educational objectives and later, in section 10, he utilizes spacing and line breaks to convert standard admonitions into poetry; for example, "These child- / ren should / not / be / punished, and / their / play with / other / children / should / be super- / vised . . . " Isolated phrases and sentences appear--some from the hospital and some from the "outside" world.

In some phrases the worlds of outside and inside mix, as in "Arterial sunrise, capillary dusk." Section 13 consists of laboratory reports. The poem breathes in and out, between syllables and long lines, between prosaic statements and poetic images. Finally, the poet finds words for the endless rhythm of hemophilia, "Gratitude and / fear--Your relentless / rhythm--I move to / it still . . . "

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This is psychiatrist Ron Charach's seventh collection of poems. It begins with the narrator going through security in order to board an airplane--a metaphor for contemporary society: we structure more and more "security" into our lives, but the uncertainty seems to increase, rather than decrease. The theme of the book is safe passage: our attempts to achieve it, our failures, and our companions along the way. In the last poem ("The Night After"), Charach tells us, "all the talk in the world cannot dampen my fear / of a world bereft of holiness." The quest is unsuccessful, yet somehow saved by a few fleeting moments of contact with something else; perhaps, it is the sacred.

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In 1822, a young Canadian paddler named Guillaume Roleau is near death after suffering a gunshot wound to the stomach. His recovery is dramatic and scientifically important. The injury has resulted in a traumatic fistula--a porthole between the outside world and Guillaume's abdominal cavity and organs. The treating physician, Dr. William Barber, immediately recognizes the incredible opportunity for medical research and conducts a lengthy series of experiments on the process of human digestion.

Guillaume--patient, research subject, and guest in the doctor's cabin--is rowdy and frequently uncooperative. He continues to participate in the grisly experiments at least partially out of affection for the physician's wife, Julia, who helps nurse him back to health as well as providing emotional sustenance.

Julia ultimately makes a large, uncredited contribution to Dr. Barber's research. At her husband's request, she has sexual relations with Guillaume so that the unreliable man will remain with the doctor until the experiments are all completed. The efforts of this tragic trio result in a landmark textbook on gastrointestinal physiology authored by Dr. Barber and Julia's illegitimate son, Jacob, sired by Guillaume Roleau.

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Seated centrally on bed and canvas, legs tightly pressed together, hands clasped between them, covering herself, a naked, adolescent girl stares directly at the viewer. Her expression is serious, tense, anxious. (Or is it coy and seductive?) Shy and defenseless, her thin lovely, virginal body contrasts with its dark amorphous shadow cast on the wall behind her.

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Holy Fire's setting is America at the end of the 21st century. A gerontocracy is firmly in place and in many older persons are reaping the benefits of life-extending technology. Mia Ziemann, the protagonist of this "cybersuspense" novel, is a 94 year-old medical economist who has a life-altering visit with a dying ex-lover. Could she become the person she had wanted to become so many decades ago--someone much more adventuresome?

In order to do so, she needs to undergo an experimental treatment--NTDCD (Neo-telemeric Dissipative Cellular Detoxification)--that does not just halt the aging process, but reverses it. NTDCD involves numerous ordeals including clogging her digestive tract with a sterilizing putty, filling her lungs with a sterilizing oxygenating fluid, replacing her cerebrospinal fluid (producing profound unconsciousness), being fetally submerged in a gelatinous tank of support fluids where the bacteria in her body are removed, and then receiving DNA treatments. If she survives the treatment the question remains whether or not she'll be able to survive as a young person in a world that favors the old.

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