Imagine What It's Like: A Literature and Medicine Anthology (A Biography Monograph)

The intersection of wisdom and science is the territory of this anthology—ground that is contested, sometimes harrowing, and often ennobling.The human experience of health care, whether ancient or modern, has always engaged those who practice it and those who encounter it as patients. Both those who live with illness of body and mind, and those who live and work alongside the patients, crave the opportunity to reflect on their experiences. In recent years, practitioners and patients alike have called attention to a crisis in our collective experience of medicine. There is a growing awareness of very different cultural expectations about the nature and treatment of illness.The intersection of medicine and the humanities is busy. Machinery seems to crowd the space, while human encounters are often brief and deeply unsatisfying to patients and caregivers alike. Despite disparate approaches to the crisis in health care—from economics to ethics—there is agreement that patients and the world of medicine need more time together, so that illness does not find expression only in the context of the emergency room.It is as a response to the collective sense of crisis and alienation that Imagine What It's Like has been constructed. Inside and outside the health care community, many have called for the chance to use the humanities not only as opportunities to reflect on their own experiences, but also as a means of improving the experiences of all of us whose lives will be touched by illness and healing, birth and death.Created by the Maine Humanities Council for its Literature and Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care programs, Imagine What It's Like contains eighty-three selections ranging from poems to short stories to excerpts from longer works. The selections are divided into five sections—The Experience of Illness, Beginnings and Endings, Trauma and Recovery, Coming to Terms, and Healing Costs—and are followed by suggestions for longer readings. This Anthology Grows Out Of Literature & Medicine: Humanities At The Heart Of Health Care, A National, Award-winning Reading And Discussion Program For Health Care Professionals That, According To One Participant, Renews The Heart And Soul Of Health Care. Started By The Maine Humanities Council In 1997, By The Beginning Of Its Second Decade, Literature & Medicine Has Reached Across The Country From Florida To Montana, Maine To Hawaii. This Would Not Have Been Possible Without Major Support From The National Endowment For The Humanities. Bringing Together Diverse Groups Of Health Care Professionals In A Variety Of Health Care Settings, Literature & Medicine Discussions Help Participants Deepen Their Communication And Interpersonal Skills While Increasing Their Cultural Awareness, Empathy For Patients, And Job Satisfaction. Section One : The Experience Of Illness. Introduction -- Musée Des Beaux Arts / W.h. Auden -- Of Training / Michel Eyquem De Montaigne -- Innocents Abroad / Robert Lipsyte -- Applicants / Felicia Nimue Ackerman -- The Cast-away / William Cowper -- Dejection : An Ode / Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- Doctors / Anne Sexton -- The Wall / Anne Sexton -- The Poet Of Ignorance / Anne Sexton -- Cleaning / Darcy Wakefield -- In Kafka's House / Leonard Kriegel -- Homage To Isaac Bashevis Singer / Susan Fromberg Schaeffer -- Silent Snow, Secret Snow / Conrad Aiken -- A Sense Of Threat / Jane Lazarre -- Hospital / Molly Holden -- Section Two : Beginnings And Endings -- Introduction -- Milk / Eileen Pollack -- Three Generations Of Native American Women's Birth Experience / Joy Harjo -- Labors Of Love / Ruth Nadelhaft -- I'm Born A Crow Indian / Fred W. Voget, Assisted By Mary K. Mee -- The Sandbox / Edward Albee -- The Enduring Chill / Flannery O'connor -- Rappaccini's Daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Black Mountain, 1977 / Donald Antrim -- Let Us Have Medicos Of Our Own Maturity / Anonymous Patient -- Hello, Hello Henry / Maxine Kumin -- The Last Words Of Henry Manley / Maxine Kumin -- What Remains / Emma Donoghue -- A Summer Tragedy / Arna Bontemps -- Elegy / Dylan Thomas -- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night / Dylan Thomas -- And Death Shall Have No Dominion / Dylan Thomas -- A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London / Dylan Thomas -- The Smile Was / Dannie Abse -- Delivery / Toi Derricotte -- Homeless / Juliet S. Kono -- Son, After The Attempt / Juliet S. Kono -- The First Time / Juliet S. Kono -- Royally Pissed / Juliet S. Kono -- Nest / Juliet S. Kono -- The Struggle / Juliet S. Kono -- The Permission / Juliet S. Kono -- In A Rush / Juliet S. Kono -- The Way / Juliet S. Kono. Section Three : Trauma And Recovery -- Introduction -- The Steel Windpipe / Mikhail Bulgakov -- This Red Oozing / Jeanne Bryner -- A Jury Of Her Peers / Susan Glaspell -- Betrayal Of What's Right / Jonathan Shay -- The Day My Father Tried To Kill Us / Pat Staten -- What I Saw From Where I Stood / Marisa Silver -- Mending / Sallie Bingham -- Torture / Jean Améry -- Section Four: Coming To Terms -- Introduction -- The Work Of Talk / Marianne A. Paget -- Without / Donald Hall -- Orinda Upon Little Hector Philips / Katherine Philips -- The Mother / Gwendolyn Brooks -- On Being Asked To Write A Poem In Memory Of Anne Sexton / Maxine Kumin -- October, Yellowstone Park / Maxine Kumin -- Ponies Gathering In The Dark / Anita Endrezze -- Cathedral / Raymond Carver -- Ashes To Ashes To Ashes / Ruth Nadelhaft -- Wisteria / Leslie Nyman -- Premature Elegy (a Sequence Of Poems) / Florence Elon -- Report From The Hospital / Wislawa Szymborska -- The Suicide's Room / Wislawa Szymborska -- In Praise Of Feeling Bad About Yourself / Wislawa Szymborska -- Astonishing The Blind / Jack Hodgins -- People Like That Are The Only People Here: Canonical Babbling In Peed Onk / Lorrie Moore -- Section Five: Healing Costs -- Introduction -- Admission, Children's Unit / Theodore Deppe -- The Eleventh / Henri Barbusse -- Baptism By Rotation / Mikhail Bulgakov -- What The Nurse Likes / Cortney Davis -- Excerpts From The Hospital / Jan De Hartog -- A Woman's War / Frank T. Vertosick, Jr. -- Mystery And Awe / Rachel Naomi Remen -- The Wound-dresser / Walt Whitman -- A Night / Louisa May Alcott -- A Nurse's Story / Peter Baida -- A Separate Species : Relationships With The World And With Ourselves / Marion Deutsche Cohen -- Excerpt From Elegy For Iris / John Bayley -- Case History / Dannie Abse -- Ten Patients And Another / Raphael Campo -- The 10,000th Aids Death In San Francisco / Raphael Campo -- On His Blindness / John Milton. Edited By Ruth Nadelhaft ; With Victoria Bonebakker. A Biography Monograph. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [640]-656) And Index.