Routine Mammogram

Pastan, Linda

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Wear, Delese
  • Date of entry: May-15-2002

Summary

The poem depicts the vulnerability a woman may feel during this procedure, one that feels anything but routine. Even though the mammogram turns out predictably normal, the patient knows that she is changed. She has seen the fragile faults deep in her body, and she knows that no one, not even her doctor with his reassuring diagnosis, can "give innocence back."

Primary Source

A Fraction of Darkness

Publisher

W. W. Norton

Place Published

New York

Edition

1985