Poetry and Medicine <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the sunrise<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the sunset<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the body<\/p>\n\n\n\n
fall apart<\/p>\n\n\n\n
while we tilt the horizon<\/p>\n\n\n\n
away from light<\/p>\n\n\n\n
knowing the sun<\/p>\n\n\n\n
setting in the West<\/p>\n\n\n\n
is<\/p>\n\n\n\n
rising in the East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the sunrise<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch the sunrise<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watch your pupils<\/p>\n\n\n\n
suspended<\/p>\n\n\n\n
midday<\/p>\n\n\n\n
between two horizons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the unlikeliest medical space in which we might imagine encountering such a similarity, the intensive care unit (ICU) shares much of the precision, delicate balancing, and life-or-death urgency of the best poetry. So it is with \u201c28 Hours in the ICU,\u201d where every word choice is as deliberately and painstakingly deployed as any critical care treatment plan, each tenuous image freighted with the possibility of transcendence.1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0The skeletal lines themselves suggest a cachectic patient clinging to life; the quiet, wan repetitions become an ebbing life force that is sustained by the hushed machinations of the untiring system. In contrast, the very human speaker of the poem, whose keen observations art makes possible, identifies his fatigue with the imperiled patient\u2019s: watching the movements of sun and sky is as magnificently ponderous as \u201cI watch the body.\u201d The long hours of ICU shifts are similarly represented, where the movement of the earth on its own axis seems to stretch beyond 24 hours, as the title suggests. Poetry here is also able to capture the speaker\u2019s awe at cutting-edge medicine\u2019s power by implicit comparison with the workings of celestial bodies, evinced in the lines \u201c\u2026we tilt the horizon\/away from light.\u201d As the poem progresses, the speaker shows us how these worlds merge, when what he watches shifts from the sunrise and sunset to the minute dark planets (or perhaps black holes?) of the patient\u2019s pupils. Through such startlingly poised poetic juxtaposition, we too feel the staggering gravity of caring for patients in extremis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry and Medicine 28 Hours in the ICU Kaveh\u00a0Dan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30419,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30418\/revisions\/30419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csccm.org.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}