Reading "Body Language" brings the reader into a world that is completely
unfamiliar to most of us, the world of medicine. It''s a compilation of poetry written entirely by
doctors. The
poems explore their world, a world of sixteen hour days, catheters, and mental patients. While this world is unfamiliar to me, except occasionally as a patient or family of a patient, these poems bring me right into the action. I feel like I am an intern working a sixteen-hour day who has not seen my mother in months. The poems are magical in that they explore something wholly different from our day-to-day experiences. The subjects of these poems are not flowers or beautiful women; they are the gritty truths of life as a doctor, and they bring the reader right into that OR. The doctors write of unfamiliar or even scary subjects in a way that speaks to universal human truths and emotions. They explore love, loss, death, relationships, exhaustion, and aging, all things that are a part of our day-to-day lives. The beauty of this compilation is that it brings the world of the young doctor, the intern, to life in a way I''ve only before seen on television. These doctors,
masters of the scalpel, are also masters of the pen.