Medical poetry is not as uncommon as one might expect. I found this interview with Rafael Campo, and was struck by his descriptions of humanity and its role in medicine. He is known to hand out copies of poems along with prescriptions or pamphlets to his patients. Though I have not practiced medicine formally yet, I have always found the unfathomable complexity of the human body along with all of its ailments and abilities to be the more artistically inspiring than anything else. Whether you are a gay doctor-poet from Cuba (like Campo) or a gremlin in scrubs, personal identity and professional responsibility can combine in a way that is utterly inspiring.
Of course he explains this more eloquently…
Though I earned an MFA at Boston University with some wonderful mentors, including Rosanna Warren, Robert Pinsky, and Derek Walcott, I think my apprenticeship was really at the physical body itself, which I encountered in all its complexity during my medical training… I was stunned by the kind of drama enacted by those stubborn iambs resonating within a heart’s broken vessels, between the astonishing dignity of my patients and their incomprehensible suffering. This harrowing, lovely music, I soon realized, was the same one I’d always found in poetry. What other medium could accommodate all the struggling physicality and cognitive determination of this drama, and offer at the same time the prospect for peace, for resolution, for healing? I believe the indigenous Americans and the ancient Greeks in their great wisdom, before the advent of so many distracting technologies, knew that in poetry, in performative language, in catharsis, body and soul could indeed briefly be joined, and that in this union was a chance to abet healing.
I finally look like Dr. G! On Sunday, August 3rd, I was officially invested with my white coat and, in the spirit of ceremony and for my vast number of readers to witness, here is the oath that came with it:
I will be just and generous to those who have taught me this art, holding them in the highest esteem, and will give guidance and instruction freely to all who wish to follow in this path.
I will strive to correct the knowledge that I have acquired and to extend its domain, while remembering that medicine is more than science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may heal as well as the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will practice my art solely for the benefit of my patients, knowing that at times I must put their interests before my own. May I never see in my patient anything but a fellow human in pain. My goal will be to help, or at least do no harm.
I will remain free of all intentional injustice, practicing with integrity and honor, and will not exploit my privileged role in the lives of my patients. What is revealed to me in confidence, I will keep inviolably secret. I will use my skills to serve all in need, with openness of spirit and without bias.
In the [virtual] presence of my teachers, my family, and my friends, I make this pledge freely and upon my honor. I am ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling.
I am still ambivalent about posting creative work online, even if only a few people read it. I find it difficult to share my writing with anyone, let alone everyone. Yet, I realize that a creative blog is relatively flat without the depth and complexity of a variety of works in a variety of styles. Moreover, after the number of application essays I have written and number of schools to which I have applied, most of the population has read my writing anyway.
In this spirit, I will post a variety of poems now and then that may or may not involve gremlins. In other words, they may involve the “scrubs” instead. Scrubs are not as fun or mischievous as gremlins, but they can serve some of the purposes that gremlins cannot. Medical school (and certainly life more generally) is always a mix of gremlin and scrubs, so this blog will have to be too…starting tomorrow…
Filed under: Gremaline Makes Mischief | Tags: background, Gremaline Makes Mischief
If you’ve read the previously-posted lyric poem about gremlins making mischief and were left a bit confused about where it came from and where it was going, I thought I might post to clarify. It is the introductory lyric poem from a novel for young readers called Gremaline Makes Mischief. I wrote the manuscript for this book a few years ago and it was the beginning of the gremlin as a fixture in my imagination. Gremaline is a young gremlin entering Middle Mischief at Madame Gremmiere ’s School of Mischief Making, where gremlins learn to make mischief in human houses (snatching car keys, turning alarm clocks from AM to PM, tipping over glasses, rearranging dishes, etc.). Gremaline and other gremlins are responsible for those little everyday annoyances that we attribute to our own negligence or absent-mindedness. They learn to do this in classes such as Hide and Sneak (where they learn mischief maneuvers) and Human Habitats (where they learn about human eccentricities).
Each chapter of Gremaline Makes Mischief begins with a lyric poem about gremlins and their mischief, and these poems may appear now and then on this blog. I am currently re-editing the manuscript for another round of agent queries and will hopefully some day get it in print. In the meantime, I am working on a sequel.
*I should probably mention that Gremaline also does some modeling in various medical garments for this blog.
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