This collection is a delight. It reflects Coulehan's deep interest in other lives, other times, other places, and demonstrates his great capacity for engagement with humanity. His poetry is always interesting, often humorous, frequently moving, and, one feels, honest.

Consider these poems, told in the physician's voice: "The Azalea Poem," in which the physician assures his dying patient that he will "live to see azaleas bloom" while "the hope I handed Alfred . . . seems so cheaply false . . . so coloured by my need" (12); or "Cracked," a wonderful rendering in which form follows story--"Her story starts the month / her husband dies and circles / to the year she spent in bed / when she was twelve and to the valve // that later turned to stone . . . "(22); or "Body Count" in which "a woman / who should have died last week--she did, / but the medics came--" evokes images of storms and the ruins of Sarajevo (10). In the patient's voice, "Good News" tells of all the frustrating bad news that an unsuspecting man receives "when all I came to the doctor for / was a leg that burnt like scalding water // and, strangely, though I'm still not sick, / my body begins to die " (17).

Coulehan is always connecting with those around him, or with those who have preceded us, whether it is the man who lives in a cardboard box on 53rd Street ("Keeping Dry" [30]), mesa Indians who lived 300 years ago ("These Shards Are Wrist Bones," [54]), 20th-century Egyptian "Women Disfigured by Sulphuric Acid" (41), or his own son ("June 2, 1998," [60]). Sometimes these connections are fraught with difficulty and elicit rueful reflection.

In the superb and funny "Hermit Crab," after enumerating a long list of grievances against someone (a relative?)--"if you tell me one more time"--the speaker threatens to "swing you back and forth without letting / your feet touch the ground" and concludes, "There. I've done it. / I don't know. I don't know if I'll be happy" (49). In "Guam," the speaker tries to communicate with his aged father, who perseverates over a wartime experience, and concludes, sadly, "I waited too long / to redeem the war we carried on, / father and son, for 50 years" (50).

For those who work in the medical humanities field this collection has much to offer. It demonstrates the insight, care, concern, and engagement that characterize Coulehan's approach to medicine, and to life itself. Those who are simply interested in intelligent, witty, accessible poetry will not be disappointed.