U.S. Poet Laureate visits DMS
By Ashley Zuzek, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Monday, October 23, 2006
U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall and Dr. Patrick Clary read works about illness, grief and living life fully at the Medical Grand Rounds at Dartmouth Medical School on Friday. The Grand Rounds, which occurs weekly at DMS, is an academic forum in which physicians and researchers make scientific presentations.
Hall, himself a cancer survivor, read poetry about losing his wife to that same illness.
"He successfully conveyed the incredibly poignant, often painful, experience of the illness of his wife Jane Kenyon," said Dr. Ira Byock, director of Palliative Medicine at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "However, it wasn't depressing. Through it all came the intensity with which he lives his life, with the sense that human life would be impoverished without embracing the pain involved in illness."
Clary, past president of the New Hampshire Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, shared two poems with the audience. The first, entitled "Memorial Day," was about the loss of his father. "The Pain," his second poem, was written about Clary's experience as a resident in a Brooklyn hospital in the 1980s.
He said that while he has only read "The Pain" publicly three times since he wrote it in 1984, he decided to read this work because he felt that the audience of medical professionals would understand it.
"It was wonderful to feel that there was so much empathy in the room, that I was able to read something very personal that I wouldn't read everywhere," Clary said.
Clary, who presents often at grand rounds, said that poetry is important in teaching empathy and compassion in medicine, an aspect of the profession that is often overlooked.
Byock said that the union between medicine and poetry has great therapeutic potential.
"Many of us believe that poetry is an important medium of communication -- that while science is the most powerful tool in understanding a patient's illness, the human experience of illness through the patient's eyes is best conveyed through narrative and poetry," Byock said.
Palliative medicine, which focuses on improving the quality of life of patients who face life-threatening illnesses, is particularly well suited to the expressive nature of poetry, he said.
Although this was the first time in his memory that the Grand Rounds involved poetry, Byock said that the experience was "extraordinary."