Showing 2381 - 2390 of 3444 annotations

Sorrow/Saudade

Alegria, Claribel

Last Updated: Mar-24-2002
Annotated by:
Bertman, Sandra

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poems (Sequence)

Summary:

Salvadorian writer and activist Claribel Alegria has composed a sequence of poems, 47 sparse love letters to her late husband Darwin "Bud" Flakoll who died in 1995. Neither sentimental nor confessional, the poems draw on the struggles of Circe, Prometheus, and Orpheus as well as themes of unfinished rites, sadness, and symbolic immortality. The translator's preface is a reminiscence of her time with the couple then living in self-imposed exile, in addition to a critical introduction to the poetry.

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Death in Venice

Mann, Thomas

Last Updated: Mar-19-2002
Annotated by:
Willms, Janice

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novella

Summary:

Gustave Aschenbach, renowned German scholar and historian, reaches a crisis in his previously austere and celibate life. Exhausted from the pressures and the seemingly sterile quality of his aesthetic endeavors, he seeks respite and pleasure. Through a series of misadventures, he eventually arrives in the summer city of Venice, a city he knows and has always longed to visit again.

The reader observes the progressive moral alteration in the rigidly self-controlled man as he succumbs to his long repressed desire to experience the types of passion that art, rather than reason, allows. His transformation extends to the worship of a beautiful young boy--Aschenbach's vision of a doomed Greek god.

As Aschenbach becomes progressively obsessed with his longing, he assumes the role of a lover gone amok. Venice is under siege by a plague, and given the chance to escape--and to warn his object's Polish family of his knowledge about the dangers facing them all--he chooses to take the ultimate risk of death rather than give up his passionate obsession.

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What the Doctor Said

Carver, Raymond

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice
Chen, Irene

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry — Secondary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Words rushing forth in a punctuationless stream, a patient describes how his doctor gives him the bad news of advanced lung cancer, and his reaction to it. There is an almost comical aspect as the doctor struggles to be both factual and sympathetic, and the patient struggles to absorb what he is being told. The doctor asks if the patient is able to find comfort and "understanding" from religion (since, apparently, he is unable to provide them). This triggers a brief poetic flight of fancy in the patient, but then he departs in a state of dazed politeness.

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The Practice

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Woodcock, John

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

In this chapter from late in his autobiography Williams focuses on his subjective experience in caring for patients. The unusual truthfulness of patients in need, their "coming to grips with the intimate conditions of their lives," inspires him both personally and artistically, as a poet. The things that patients reveal about themselves and about the human condition not only keep him going as a physician; they are the stuff of poetry, the human truths that lie beneath the "dialectical clouds" we construct to protect ourselves from contact in everyday life.

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The Immortals

Borges, Jorge Luis

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

This short story begins with a summary of the tale of Guillermo Blake, who believed that "the five senses obstruct or deform the apprehension of reality." The narrator then relates the tale to his own experience: upon visiting his gerontologist for a check-up, he is informed of a procedure that confers immortality. The "immortals" are reduced to living brains within wooden cubes, their bodies having been replaced by "formica, steel, plastics." The narrator tries not to show his horror, but moves immediately to a different part of the country under an alias.

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Touching

Hellerstein, David

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A third year medical student rotates through a gynecology clinic at the university. The attending Dr. Snarr, is supposed to treat his patients' chronic pelvic pain, but only seems to inflict pain himself. The student/narrator wants to comfort the patients, but lacks the knowledge, skills, and authority. The student also feels uncomfortable with issues of sexuality and intimacy with these female patients.

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The Cancer Match

Dickey, James

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The narrator is a patient with advanced cancer who has come home from the hospital after being told that "medicine has no hope." Yet, for one night, he strives to overcome his cancer with drink, his "Basic Life Force," and hope.

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The Last Words of My English Grandmother

Williams, William Carlos

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Chen, Irene
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This is a description of the last moments of the narrator's ailing grandmother. She is "wrinkled and nearly blind," and protests cantankerously as the ambulance speeds her towards the hospital. However, in a sudden change of character, her last words express how tired she is of looking at the passing trees; her loss of interest in the view parallels her loss of interest in life.

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Mistakes

Hilfiker, David

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

Hilfiker describes a number of his own medical errors. He is concerned with the physical, emotional, social, and economic consequences of medical mistakes, all of which have grown as medicine's ability to cure disease has grown. Hilfiker contends that physicians are poorly equipped to cope with their own mistakes. The nature and practice of medicine are such that it is often possible to conceal mistakes from patients. Should they be concealed? Hilfiker says not. He implies that there are few (if any) circumstances which warrant deception.

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House Calls

Thomas, Lewis

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

This short autobiographical account gives a flavor of American medical practice in the early part of the 20th century. It also sketches the medical "persona" and the human character of the author's father.

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