Getting the News from Poetry

Dean Gianakos, MD

Lynchburg Family Medicine Residency

November 10, 2010

Barn burned down. Barn burned down. Now we can see the Now we can see the moon.moon.

Basho 1644-94Basho 1644-94

Objectives

Make connections between literature and medicine

Deepen our understanding of the experience of illness

Learn how stories can help us to understand ethical dilemmas in medicine

Today:

Reading patients, reading poetry Reading patients, reading stories

Main Goal

Have fun!

It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

“That is why as a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man? There the thing was, right in front of me. I could touch it, smell it. It was myself, naked just as it was, without a lie telling itself to me in its own terms.”

The experience of illness

The Sick Wife

The Poor

By constantly tormenting them

with reminders of the lice in

their children’s hair, the

School Physician first

brought their hatred down on him.

But by this familiarity

they grew used to him, and so,

at last,

took him for their friend and advisor.

The Use of Force

Framework for resolving ethical dilemmas

Medical facts Patient values Quality of life Cost, other considerations

Ethical Principles

Beneficence Autonomy Justice

What the Doctor Said

Reading Patients, Reading Poetry

Analysis and presence The part and whole Language Looking for meaning Individual interpretation versus universal

one

Reading Patients, Reading Poetry

Meaning evolves as story unfolds Detachment and empathy Listening Tolerating ambiguity Art and technique

Reading patients, reading poetry: differences

Greater urgency Face to face Greater need for certainty Need to make a decision

Why do doctors read poetry?

Some of them think it’s fun! Doesn’t necessarily make better doctors Sharpen skills: language, observation,

empathy Expands world of feeling, language, and

meaning

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

Sharon Olds

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Picasso

Poem: "Philosophy" by Daniel Hoffman

In sophomore year the great philosopher,Then ninety, out of retirement came, to passHis wisdom on to one more generation.Reading his last lecture to our class,

That afternoon the mote-filled sunlight leanedAttentively with purpose through the tallWindows in amber buttresses that seemedTo gird the heavens so they wouldn't fall.

The blaze of his white mane, his hooded eyes,The voice that plumbed us from reflection's skiesSo far above temptation or reward—

The scene has never left my mind. I wroteHis lecture down, but, in an old trunk, my notesHave crumbled, and I can't recall a word.