The Healing Art of Writing: Volume One Originated at the Conference of This Name That Brought Together Caregivers and Patients Who Share a Passion For

Perspectives in Medical Humanities The pieces in The Healing Art of Writing: Volume One originated at the conference of this name that brought together caregivers and patients who share a passion for writing about the mysterious forces of illness and recovery. A belief shared among The Healing Art of Writing all contributors is that being cured of a disease is not the same as being healed, and that writing poetry and prose brings us to a place of healing. Our subject is the body, our medical experiences widely diverse, our goal to express through literature what The Healing Art happens when a physical or mental anguish disrupts our lives. About this series of The Perspectives in Medical Humanities book series promotes scholarship produced or reviewed under the auspices of the University of California Medical Humanities Consortium, a multi-campus research collaborative connecting communities across Writing California associated with uc medical centers. The aim is to bring together the visions and analytic approaches from scholars across the ‘two cultures’ of science and humanities to demonstrate how multiple perspectives on biomedical issues enhance our overall understanding of social, cultural, and humanistic meanings attached to health care. Joan Baranow is Associate Professor of English at Dominican University of California. Brian Dolan is Professor of Medical Humanities at ucsf. David Watts is Clinical Joan Baranow, PhD, Brian Dolan, PhD, and David Watts, MD PhD, Brian Dolan, and David Watts, Joan Baranow, Edited by Professor of Medicine at ucsf. University of California Medical Humanities Consortium 3333 California Street Suite 485 San Francisco, ca 94143-0850 Edited by Joan Baranow, PhD University of California Press www.ucpress.edu Brian Dolan, PhD David Watts, MD Cover art by Anthony Russo One Volume Volume One berkeley — los angeles — london The Healing Art of Writing Perspectives in Medical Humanities Perspectives in Medical Humanities publishes scholarship produced or reviewed under the auspices of the University of California Medical Humanities Consortium, a multi-campus collaborative of faculty, students and trainees in the humanities, medicine, and health sciences. Our series invites scholars from the humanities and health care professions to share narratives and analysis on health, healing, and the contexts of our beliefs and practices that impact biomedical inquiry. General Editor Brian Dolan, PhD, Professor of Social Medicine and Medical Humanities, University of California, San Francisco (ucsf) Forthcoming Titles The Remarkables: Endocrine Abnormalities in Art By Carol Clark and Orlo Clark Hatching Innovation: One Institution’s Paths to Discovery By Henry Bourne (Winter, 2012) Clowns and Jokers Can Heal Us: Comedy and Medicine By Albert Howard Carter iii (Winter, 2012) Social Medicine and the Politics of Health By Dorothy Porter (Spring, 2012) Darwin and the Emotions: Mind, Medicine and the Arts Edited by Angelique Richardson and Brian Dolan (Fall, 2012) www.medicalhumanities.ucsf.edu [email protected] This series is made possible by the generous support of the Dean of the School of Medicine at ucsf, the Center for Humanities and Health Sciences at ucsf, and a mcrp grant from the University of California Office of the President. The Healing Art of Writing Edited by Joan Baranow, PhD Brian Dolan, PhD David Watts, MD Volume One First published in 2011 by uc Medical Humanities Consortium and distributed by UC Press. berkeley — los angeles — london © 2011 University of California Medical Humanities Consortium 3333 California Street, Suite 485 San Francisco, ca 94143-0850 Cover Art by Anthony Russo, 2010 Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929102 isbn 978-0-615-38132-9 Printed in usa Contents Preface and Introduction xii David Watts faculty essay The Healing Art of Writing 1 Catharine Clark-Sayles poetry Not Enough 10 Bibliography 11 Night Call 12 Julia B. Levine poetry Denver, 1988 13 Shame 15 Interim Report to My Late Student 16 Meg Newman memoir Excerpt from Memoir 18 Larry Ruth poetry Friday Afternoon and Other Adventures 24 Occupational Therapy 26 Casting a Spell: Summer 28 Veneta Masson faculty essay Silence and Other Lessons from the Language of Music 30 vi The Healing Art of Writing Mary Stone poetry Dystonia 39 Wildfires Are Following Me Around 41 How Do Old Women Pray? 42 Ruth Saxey-Reese poetry What This Field Cannot Hold 43 Ask Away 44 Zoomorphic 45 Wendy Patrice Williams memoir The Autobiography of a Sea Creature 46 Suzanne Tay-Kelley poetry Gangsta Holiday 53 Phoenix 54 Stay 56 Brian Cronwall poetry Another Day in Eternity 58 Nostalgia 59 Rebecca Ashcraft memoir Lullaby 60 Contents vii Charlotte Melleno poetry White Shoulders 67 Everything I Know Is True 69 The Virgin Mary Goes Line Dancing 70 Lisa Kerr poetry The Girl Who Grew Herself Up as a Bird, Norway 1349 71 Wild Rabbits in San Rafael 72 Deer among Rabbits 73 Louis B. Jones faculty essay Empathy and Characterization 74 Ann Emerson poetry About Doctor G. 82 Not the Last 83 Terri Mason poetry Untie 84 Boundaries 85 Longing 86 Warren Holleman memoir Group Therapy 87 viii The Healing Art of Writing Ashley Mann poetry Breach 93 Air 94 Watching the Fire Trucks Gather above Highland Road 95 LeeAnn Bartolini poetry Note to a Suffering Patient 96 Modernity/Post (a Nod to Robert Hass) 97 Poetry of Aunts 98 Amanda Skelton memoir Attack of the Killer Calories 99 Marilyn Morrissey memoir Cycling 105 Jan Haag poetry Grow 113 Night Watch 115 Aphasia 116 Sarah Paris poetry This Body Sings with Despair 117 Questions I Must Never Ask of My Mother 118 Going Down 119 Contents ix Sharon Dobie poetry For Michael 120 Even to This 121 Daylily 121 memoir Good Enough 122 Terese Svoboda faculty essay Compassion in Fiction: Can’t Get Enough of It 127 Fran Brahmi poetry Bumper Sticker 139 Remembered 139 On Losing a Son 140 Therese Jung Doan poetry Procrastination 141 Time 142 Madeleine Biondolillo memoir The Virgin Point 143 Elizabeth M. Ackerson poetry Close as I Can Stand 146 3 Haiku 147 Crossing to Safety 147 x The Healing Art of Writing Abby Caplin poetry Morning at Esalen 148 It Sometimes Happens 149 John Fox faculty essay Poetry, Community, and the Healing Heart 150 Muriel Karr poetry Stigma 157 Have You Ever Been Diagnosed 159 The Price of Eggs 160 Joanna Steinberg Varone memoir My King and I 161 Anne Anderson poetry The Operation 162 Adjusting to Endless Changes/Losses 166 Making Rounds with Doctor Elliot P. Joslin 167 Suzanne Edison poetry The Arousing: Thunder, Keeping Still: Mountain, Preponderance of the Small 169 Night Court 170 Jen Cross s i s t e r memoir excerpted from s i s t e r : a de-ology 171 Contents xi Jennifer Stevenson memoir What They Carry 178 Carol Howard-Wooten poetry 25 Years, Living with Stroke 182 Insistent 184 Home Hospice 185 Terri Pauser Wolf memoir The Stories Remain 186 Claire Badaracco memoir The Middle Surgeon 191 Joan Baranow poetry 32 Weeks 198 Prescription 199 Meadow 201 David Watts poetry After Long Silence, Running Into My Ex at a Family Gathering 202 During the Empty Years 203 Jane Hirshfield faculty essay Some Thoughts on Poetry, Permeability, Wholeness, and Healing 204 Notes on Contributors 209 xii The Healing Art of Writing Brian Dolan Preface The Perspectives in Medical Humanities book series promotes scholarship produced or reviewed under the auspices of the University of California Medical Humanities Consortium (ucmhc)—a multi-campus organization that was established upon the principle of collaboration between scholars within the humanities and the biomedical and health sciences. Our books investigate social, cultural and artistic meanings of health care and are primarily concerned to demonstrate how scholars from both the humanities and health-professions can speak to each other, and indeed a general audience, with minimal technical jargon and specialized academic language. Our series brings together the visions and analytic approaches from scholars across the “two cultures” divide to demonstrate how multiple perspectives enhance our overall understanding of certain themes or specific topics. Our commitment is not only to bridge disciplines, but to demonstrate how different perspectives complement and help inform each other. Thus we put into practice one of the central tenets of our pedagogical mission which is reflexivity: writing about how our own methods of understanding the topics we are researching change as the result of engaging with other points of view. It is a great pleasure to introduce this, our first volume in the series.The Healing Art of Writing brings together caregivers and patients who share a passion for writing about the mysterious forces of illness and recovery. A belief shared among all contributors is that being cured of a disease is not the same as being healed, and that writing poetry and prose brings us to a place of healing. Our writers embrace perfectly what our series aims to promote, which is the desire to communicate to audiences beyond any individual academic or professional community in order to share perspectives on the cultures of health and healing that profoundly impact so many lives. The editors would like to thank the University of California Office of the President’s Multi-campus Research Program Initiative for funding the UC Medical Humanities Consortium that supports this series. We would like to thank Laura Cerruti, Director of Digital Content Development, at UC Press, as well as Matthew Winfield, Operations Coordinator at California Digital Library, for their support. xiii Joan Baranow and David Watts Introduction In the summer of 2010 a group of writers, poets, patients, nurses, and physicians gath- ered for a week-long conference on the campus of Dominican University of California to explore through writing the various dimensions of illness and healing. They were drawn together by a shared belief that expressive writing has the power to heal the spirit.

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