The editors of Blood and Bone have assembled a fine and varied collection of poetry by physicians. When I first opened this book, I wondered what I would find--what do our doctors think about as they attempt to cure us, attempt to fight off our diseases and our deaths? I wanted to find love, compassion, and, most of all, evidence of humanity, and I did. In section one, the physicians consider their patients, often speaking in the patient's voice, and they present the tools of their trade. Here's the first stanza of Dannie Abse's lovely and haunting "The Stethoscope," an example of the quality and depth of the poetry throughout this volume:

Through it,/ over young women's abdomens tense,/ I have heard the sound of creation / and, in a dead man's chest, the silence / before creation began.

Also in this section, see "The Azalea Poem" by Jack Coulehan. In this poem the doctor admits that the false hope he gave a patient was "colored by my need." At home, the physician grieves for time lost, for the imperfection of life and relationship, for the elusive, everyday pleasures in a poem that's touching, painfully honest, and reassuringly humane. Alice Jones' "Tap" relates the poet's sensual vision of a successful spinal tap, admitting not love for the patient, but sheer delight in the procedures and successes of the trade. In the second section, we hear what the physician thinks about when away from the hospital or office, and we're surprised, perhaps, to learn that doctors worry, fret, and ponder the significance and the horror of what they must do in the name of healing. Rafael Campo daydreams while taking a bath, washing away "The hospital, the incurable illnesses," in his "El Curandero," and Kristen Emmott vents her frustration at being wife, mother, and physician, juggling family and housework in a poem that's both funny and poignant, "Who Looks After Your Kids?" This section, because it intertwines the personal with the professional, is extremely moving and contains some of the finest poems. For example, see John Graham-Pole's "Leaving Mother, 1954." The third section looks at teaching and education, and, as all the sections do, presents many poems about death--the monster that these physicians most often try to defeat both in their work and in their poems. Especially in the poems about autopsy, the reader gets a sense of the physician's fear and awe when looking into the human body--as Campo says, "It was terrible, what the body told." Outstanding poems here include Abse's "Carnal Knowledge" and "The Origin of Music"; Jack Coulehan's "Anatomy Lesson" (one of the most moving and reassuring poems in this collection) and "The Rule of Thirds"; and John Stone's "Gaudeamus Igitur: A Valediction." The final section presents poems that transcend the individual patient and physician and consider the world beyond, where suffering becomes universal and political. For me, these poems were less successful than the more intimate poems of the book's first three sections. This is a book of poetry that should be read and reread, with pages marked and worn. The editors, wisely, did not spare us anything--in this volume we meet physicians' fear, joy, arrogance, necessary dark humor, doubt, and, ultimately, their stark and utter humanity.