Booklist called Berlin "A twenty-first century William Carlos Williams" and indeed, like Williams, Berlin writes about his patients both from the distance of recollection and with the immediacy and intimacy of a hands-on exam.  Berlin's poems contain little surprises, unique language and metaphor.  In "A Curious Kind of Love" (p. 1) two mating Orioles become "a cloud of chatter / and lust."  A lovely image, then the surprise as the narrator compares that courtship to the beginning of treatment--when a psychiatrist and patient embark on their own ritual, becoming "as close to one another as we can be / without having sex."

The poet / doctor's insights about patient care include both the actual and the supernatural, recognizing the moments of transcendence that might occur. A common stethoscope becomes "this antique our pretext to bend over patients / as if we are praying" ("The Stethoscope, p. 7).  Berlin is equally adept at capturing the angst and turmoil that can exist in patient care, especially in medical school or residency. See "First Night On-Call, Coronary Care Unit" (p. 10), "Bingo Fuel" (p. 11), and the section titled "Professional Distance" in the long poem "Characters" (p. 25). 

Readers and poets have much to learn from Berlin, whose just-right endings often explode, waking us up.  See the final four lines of "The Diagnosis" (p.70) and the last five lines of "Listening to Dead Patients" (p.71).

While Berlin writes from the point of view of the caregiver, he is always aware of the invisible line that exists between doctor and patient.  In poems like "It's Always a Brain Tumor" (p. 17) and in poems in sections IV and VI, especially, he reveals the narrator's deep "human-ness."  Berlin tells patients and readers that their caregivers are, finally, like them--vulnerable, fearful, hopeful.