My Mammogram
McClatchy, J. D. (Joseph Donald, Jr.)
Primary Category:
Literature /
Poetry
Genre: Poems (Sequence)
-
Annotated by:
- Ratzan, Richard M.
- Date of entry: Jan-30-2006
Summary
A poem of five sonnets reflecting on the poet's discovery of an asymmetry in his breasts requiring a mammogram. The resultant diagnosis, gynecomastia, is the source of flippant "nervous humor," as McClatchy describes it in a section on the authors and their poems at the end of this anthology (pg. 265), followed at the end of the poem by a "darker, more serious meditation" (again in the poet's own words). The meditation is not so dark or abrupt that it undermines the poem's integrity.
Primary Source
The Best American Poetry 1995
Publisher
Simon & Schuster: Touchstone
Place Published
New York
Edition
1995
Editor
Richard Howard & David Lehman
Commentary