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Blood & Bone: Poems by Physicians Angela Belli and Jack Coulehan, eds. Blood & Bone: Poems by Physicians. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998. xvii + 160 pp. Paperback, $17.95.
On first reading Blood & Bone: Poems by Physicians, I was self-indulgently inclined to look for references to nurses. My second inclination was to compare and contrast the collection with Between the Heartbeats (Cortney Davis and Judy Schaefer, eds. [Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1995]). The two books from the University of Iowa Press are complementary as companion books, but the unique voice of Blood & Bone emerged as I indulged in the luxury of reading it from front cover to back cover.
The book moves effortlessly from the job of seeing patients and doctoring, to being at home, to teaching in classroom and ward, and- finally to the finish-to linking into the larger community of the world. By book's end the reader can share the insight, amusement, and rigor of the doctor's life. In the many worlds that can be called the doctor's, it is remarkably clear that a doctor knows what a doctor knows, and this specific knowledge cannot be escaped regardless of environment. There is no return to undergraduate innocence. This is the fun of reading doctors' and nurses' poetry-to search for and discover the metaphorical insight that a special knowledge can bring to a particular poem.
Metaphorical insight is demonstrated in so many of the poems that it is difficult to choose one as illustration, but "Tap" by Alice Jones, from the first section, titled "from patient one to next," is a fine example of the metaphoric door. The narrator says:
I love to find a door. Like the spinal tap-
above the draped fetal curve, you work
the trocar inwards. Dowser, boatman,
auger, bore. Every surface has its opening.
(P. 31)
Poetry by doctors and nurses, and especially this poem, is about subtle openings and about finding them in order to begin the healing process and, perhaps, to initiate the invasive procedures and treatments that lead to healing. Whether physical or mental, an opening must be found. The joy of creative...