Tag: poetry

Tony Sun Tony Sun (2 Posts)

Columnist

Weill Cornell Medical College

Tony Sun is an MD-PhD student at Cornell Medical College. He completed his BA in English literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Tony read Shakespeare unenthusiastically in high school, but he reread and rediscovered Shakespeare in college and has since remained committed to a lifelong appreciation of imaginative literature.

Shakespeare for Doctors

This column is about the benefits of reading Shakespeare and is written with medical students, doctors, and scientists in mind. Reading Shakespeare’s verse drama trains reading skills, in the broadest sense of the word “reading.” Reading well means doing active thinking, questioning, and imagining, which are the same skills involved in reading a complex patient, or an elusive scientific problem. Shakespeare offers excellent plays for practicing these skills outside the clinic or laboratory, and my goal is to give examples of how I read his verse drama — each installment will focus on one play.




Poetry for Medical Students

Published by Tony Sun

When my classmates ask me to recommend poems for reading, I am always thrilled to share my favorite poems. After sharing, I sometimes ask myself the following questions: What am I recommending exactly? How can reading poetry benefit my classmates? How has reading poetry helped me, if it even has? These are important questions to think about, particularly when thinking about how to prioritize reading poetry alongside other activities; this would not be unlike using triage to assign priority for treatments.

Stethoscope

Published by Lindsay Boyers

I came to be in 1816, Before then I was never seen.   During my birth tuberculosis ran wild, I think it is fair to say I saved the life of a child.   I arose from the astute mind of Monsieur Laënnec, I bet you did not detect my French accent.   I’m often found around your neck, Nowadays I can get pretty high-tech.   Sometimes I float in your white coat pocket, But …

Worry

Published by Toral Patel

A frail man leaned against the wall, Gasping for breath, afraid to fall. The rest of him shivered in panic at the thought A heart attack, perhaps or a stroke, blood clot? “I must be going crazy,” repeated his heartbeat. “I must try to calm down and take a seat.”   The doctors marched in with the test results and all, They lined up against the opposite wall. Explained to the patient the source of …

EKG Calamity (or, Love and Cardiology)

Published by Steven Lange

In that sweet primordial pause before knowing, before knowing you had that brilliant lub without whose cause my sinus would but sing for two. This small sound within the chamber mocks with flagrant range the mistook letter which does not describe the valve but more the knock of passion greater than mere muscle twitch. I have no way of knowing the golden disarray: how you would stare at tiring light pound the heart and dry …

Eau de Medical School

Published by Nita Chen, MD

At the start, it was Crisp Like the sound of a chilled cucumber Snapped in half briskly on a hot summer day Fresh In the novelty of all things A foreign state with foreign friends A foreign box to call a home. With time, it was replaced with The reek Of persistent formaldehyde Clinging to every pore And every item owned (despite relentless efforts to sterilize and compartmentalize) Its phantom stench in almost every aroma …

Beta Amyloid Blues

Published by Kiersten Pollard

In the kitchen on the floor counting the tiles Again because the number slips Like all the other numbers slip Nothing can be proven this way or solved And when you call, you never mean to call the names you say are not the names You leave the windows open while the neighbors try not to see But sometimes it is pieced together A quilt like waves in a squall Electricity the thread A brilliant …

An Ode to First Aid

Published by Priya Misra

They say that when you sleep, you formulate memories. The last thing I see before I shut my eyes, are you part of them? You are my most intimate partner, The only one who shares my bed. What do you think of when you watch me sleep? Why do you not provide me with the safety I seek? I try so hard to hold you close, To fill in the holes, the gaps, in my …

Quandary Over Coffee

Published by Steven Lange

Perhaps it was the persistent scare of the superbug that compelled the sun-riser to surrender to the notion that a coffee cup had been sullied by a minor fall: that the time perceived was unequal and unrelated to the speed of selfish microbes settling on the rim where his mouth was meant to be.   The Unknown Soldier in his drowsy cadence assumed clumsy control over the machine while residents in loose blue pants were …

Acendemic: A Portmanteau

Published by Steven Lange

Who stands, the crux left of the watershed bearing with the catarrh of the twilight that sinewy sight that strove of sound unsaid. What lip eschews the running Muse, its maw on spring’s aphasic drear; uncounted seer quietly tearing from the height, appalled and short-stocked sitting on the wrested watch arranging useful cogs of livid ash to pride the fire of its balderdash; gone home and back again, aroused to taste taller than grass and …

Leah

Published by Annie Robinson

How can doctors-in-training utilize creative expression to cope with and explore the challenging process of becoming a doctor? Leah, a second-year medical student, shares two poems she wrote. In the first she addresses the struggles faced during her first year, and in the second she reflects on the experience of personal healing.

Life Song

Published by Sophia Tolliver

In the key of crunching cartilage, embedded in a melody of broken hips, wrapped in a base line of nuts and bolts, metal syncopated to eruptions of pain up steep and narrow stairs, grey and receding memories line the corridor of this old house. it and I, we still remember the creaking of painful harmonies, storms approaching and penetrating these walls from the inside out, we breathe an asthmatic crescendo in time with the wind …

Sophia Tolliver (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer Emeritus

Ohio State University College of Medicine

Sophia is a member of the Class of 2015 at Ohio State University College of Medicine.