Poetry for Medical Students.

[searun]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

" We grow old, we grow old
We wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled,
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
by seagirls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,
till human voices wake us and we drown."

T.S. Elliot

What is your favorite line of poetry? What is the greatest line of poetry you have ever read? Have you ever fallen in love with a line of poetry that reverberates through your brain and affects your consciousness? What is it? Yeah, pre-med students can love poetry. Medical students love poetry, I believe. Give me a line.

My other favorite is from Dylan Thomas, the great Welsch poet from the 30's, when his Dad was dying:

"And you my father, there on that sad height, curse, bless me now with your
fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
rage, rage, against the dying of the light"

If you become doctors, you will indeed witness the "dying of the light."
And poetry may help you understand what you have witnessed.

Searun

 

[olemissbabydoc]

Gooood topic. But after pulling 2 12's at Clearview Recovery Center (the A&D unit I'm psych interning out of), I'm exhausted and can't think straight. Plus I have another at least half day tomorrow with Family Sessions.

Oh yeah. There was a topic... let me think on that. I'll have a thought provoking answer... tomorrow.

 

[sunflwr85]

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

Robert Frost

This one comes to mind a lot lately, when all of this gets overwhelming. How nice it would be to slip away, just for a moment, back to childlike innocence and simplicity.

 

[Writer1985]

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

So simple and visually evocative, and yet so complex. Why is a red wheelbarrow so important? Rainwater? Chickens? So I like this poem because it defies explication.

Yeats's "The Second Coming" is another favorite, because it actually makes me shiver every time I read it. Especially the first stanza:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

 

[A Tree]

" We grow old, we grow old
We wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled,
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
by seagirls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,
till human voices wake us and we drown."

T.S. Elliot

What is your favorite line of poetry? What is the greatest line of poetry you have ever read? Have you ever fallen in love with a line of poetry that reverberates through your brain and affects your consciousness? What is it? Yeah, pre-med students can love poetry. Medical students love poetry, I believe. Give me a line.

My other favorite is from Dylan Thomas, the great Welsch poet from the 30's, when his Dad was dying:

"And you my father, there on that sad height, curse, bless me now with your
fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
rage, rage, against the dying of the light"

If you become doctors, you will indeed witness the "dying of the light."
And poetry may help you understand what you have witnessed.

Searun

You've already quoted my favorite (Prufrock) so in keeping with the Eliot theme (The Wasteland - this one gives me goosebumps):

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

 

[phospho]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling

 

[sunflwr85]

You've already quoted my favorite (Prufrock) so in keeping with the Eliot theme (The Wasteland - this one gives me goosebumps):

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

LOVE Eliot. Prufrock's my favorite, but I just finished studying The Waste Land in my 20's lit class and have gained an amazing appreciation for it as well.

 

[Pkboi24]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling

It's a great poem and I use to love it, but now that I've grown closer to being a man, I think what Kipling said was a bunch of bull****. Still a good poem though.

 

[LeikiLaniAhAh]

I've had the same prufrock stanza as my signature forever...another of my favorites is Bukowski:

Oh Yes
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.