Body Language: Poems of the Medical Training Experience

In Body Language physicians and medical students chronicle their challenging, often harrowing experiences. The anthology is broken into six sections: Medical Student, First Year; Second Year; Clinical Years; Intern; Resident; and Attending. Other anthologies have featured poems about medicine and healthcare, but the approach of this collection—poems written by doctors-in-training proceeding step-by-step through the medical training experience—is unique in medical literature. By presenting physicians who are also skilled poets addressing a diverse range of medical situations, Body Language offers fascinating insights into the inner world of people who regularly face life-and-death decisions.

Stephanie Brown Clark received her MA in English Literature from the University of Western Ontario, with an MD from McMaster University. She completed her PhD in medical history and English Literature at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1998, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester Medical Centre. Dagan Coppock received his BS in Biology from the University of Tennessee. Following his undergraduate training he lived in Nigeria as a Fulbright scholar researching the poetry of traditional healers. He graduated from Yale School of Medicine and is currently a medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Neeta Jain grew up in Las Vegas, NV. After completing her undergraduate degree at Stanford University and attending medical school at the University of Rochester, she returned to the west coast for residency training in internal medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Fransisco.