Tag: literary analysis
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The Call of the Wild and COVID-19
Liam ButchartStony Brook, New York, United StatesSamantha RizzoWashington DC, United States The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a terrible toll upon all of us and has brought the medical system—and the providers who inhabit it—to its knees. There is a tradition in medicine, following Sir William Osler’s “Aequinimitas,” of compassionate detachment: as physicians or trainees, we…
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Reading poems, saving lives
Dean GianakosVirginia, United States Men and women who tout the value of poetry like to refer to a stanza in William Carlos Williams’ famous love poem, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, written in 1947: It is difficultTo get the news from poemsYet men die miserably every dayFor lackOf what is found there.1 If what the physician-poet…