Judy Schaefer, along with Cortney Davis and Amy Marie Haddad have been largely responsible for bringing nurse poets to the light. For years doctors were the health care professionals who got published and read, and the nurses seemed to be silenced (or silent), perhaps because they saw so much pain and suffering, which, as Elaine Scarry observed, "resists language" (The Body in Pain). On the other hand, writing poetry can be healing for the nurses, and reading it can be healing for others.

In the last twenty years or so, nurses have been published in anthologies and their own individual collections. Their voices speak of nursing experiences, perspectives, interpretations. This volume is especially rich in its combination of excellent poetry and the writers' comments about it. For example, Amy Haddad writes about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy, where the nurse becomes the patient. Even though she knows what the drugs are, how they work, what her reactions are likely to be, that information does not really help her cope with the nausea and loneliness. What she wants is "a depth of compassion I can collapse in."

As nurse Theodore Deppe points out, "Both nursing and poetry are ways of practicing the art of attention" (54),and the poetry here stimulates the reader's attention as well. For instance, Sandra Bishop Ebner's poem, "Autopsy No 24722," juxtaposes the pathologist's clinical terminology about the corpse with the daughter's emotional memories about her father--same subject, but very different perspectives. This wonderful collection will enlighten anyone who gets into it.