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TOM CRANN: It's All Things Considered from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Tom Crann.

On the surface, you might not think that poetry and medicine are likely companions, but many of the concerns of physicians and patients-- life and death, struggle and hope-- have also been the regular themes of poets throughout the ages. And many medical doctors have also tried their hand at poetry. The most notable, probably William Carlos Williams, who's better known for his poetry than for his medical practice.

Well, here again, for our annual dose of the poetry of physicians and patients is Dr. John Hallberg. He is our regular medical analyst here on All Things considered. And John, it is April, so it is National Poetry Month. And welcome, as always.

JOHN HALBERG: Thank you, Tom. It's great to be here.

TOM CRANN: Well, I was surprised to find out that two of the poems today actually appeared in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. Is that a regular feature?

JOHN HALBERG: It is. In fact, they have a section called Poetry and Medicine. These pieces are often submitted by physicians, but often nurses, and patients alike.

TOM CRANN: So the first one we have comes from the JAMA or Journal of the American Medical Association. And it's fairly recent. I think it grows out of the experience of Hurricane Katrina, right?

JOHN HALBERG: It does. It's written by Wayne Larrabee, who is a plastic surgeon in Seattle, Washington. And it's entitled Charity Hospital New Orleans, 1735 to 2005. This hospital, by virtue of the fact that it was created in the early 1700s, is quite famous or infamous, as the case may be. And as it stands right now, it's not clear whether it's really going to open again in the way that it once had. So I think that that's why he put the poem this way, 1735 to 2005.

TOM CRANN: Sort of an elegy for the lost charity hospital.

JOHN HALBERG: Absolutely.

TOM CRANN: Why don't you read it for us.

JOHN HALBERG: I will.

Generations climbed her stone steps

Disappeared for years inside her gray walls

Learned to live 36-hour days

And then to sleep without dreams

We pass through admit rooms

Studied gunshot wounds and abdominal pain

Absorbed impermanence and accepted death

We walked the deep night wards silent,

save for an occasional moan

Listened for the absence of breath

We emerged changed

Not more compassionate, perhaps,

But calmer, sadder, more resigned

From those years, much was lost

Lives and stories forever gone

Our hands remember though, how to wield a knife

Separate good tissue from bad

Preserve vessel and nerve and something more

How to touch a dying patient,

Whisper a wordless benediction,

and receive a blessing in return?

TOM CRANN: Charity Hospital New Orleans 1735 to 2005 by Dr. Wayne Larrabee from Seattle, a plastic surgeon who sort of encapsulates the history of, I suppose, all the doctors who have worked and all the patients who've been through that hospital in that long tenure there.

JOHN HALBERG: Absolutely. Certainly that hospital, but others as well. I think that many of us grow attached to these places of brick and mortar. And it's interesting, if we think about how much goes on in those confined walls, all the suffering, all the joy, the lives that are brought into this world and the lives that leave this world.

TOM CRANN: Next, I think we should move on to the patients' point of view. And we have two contrasting ones here. And the first one comes from a collection that you introduced us to of cancer poetry, mostly by cancer patients and survivors, right?

JOHN HALBERG: This is something from the Cancer Poetry Project. It's published by Fairview Press. And the subtitle is Poems by Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them.

TOM CRANN: We'll start with that point of view, and then we'll continue with another poem by the Irish poet who was just here for a prize, Dennis O'Driscoll got the O'Shaughnessy Prize in poetry. And he's written the opposite point of view. So first, if we could have Odds. And this is by Jane Eaton. Hamilton

JOHN HALBERG: That's right. She wrote this poem when she was thinking of friends and loved ones who had suffered through breast cancer. So this is sort of about breast cancer from that perspective.

You are 34

You understand that your chances of turning 35 are only adequate but worth hoping on

And that the chances of your turning 40 are remote

The things you appreciate are smaller than the things your friends appreciate

The pulp of an apple, the dead petal of a tulip, an ant crawling on a lit light bulb

Ugly men, stupid TV sitcoms

You appreciate lottery tickets, especially, but never buy them

You laugh

You ignore the jolt of never again wearing a low cut gown

Or never again being unsure how mammography is done or why

TOM CRANN: Clinical Elation by Dennis O'Driscoll.

In the outpatients' cubicle,

You shed the paper gown and dive head first for cover

Shirt and sweater relieved

Your sentence is deferred

Reprieved, you melt back into the city crowd

The rush hour cortege of cars unmoved for miles

How fresh this stale world seems

Like the aniseed smell of wildflowers

Sweet globes of pineapple weeds squeezed between fingers on a riverbank

From which supple trout are spotted fluttering in pools

Then glossing over moss and stone

A pianist's hands dashing out glissando notes

Interesting how both of those poems from the perspective of a patient who's been diagnosed with something sort of grim, and the patient who clearly has had good test results, have similar. The details of life become sharper.

JOHN HALBERG: I love the juxtaposition of these two because they really do have that similar rootedness and the little details that so often we all forget. And that it takes something, unfortunately like an illness or the worry of an illness perhaps, to let us see things.

And in the case of your poem there, the second one, the elation that one feels and the just exuberance in life. I can't help but think of Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters when he learns he doesn't have a brain tumor and his leaping down the road. And I think we probably all have felt that to some extent when we've been reassured of the absence of a disease or illness.

TOM CRANN: Now, from the doctor's point of view here, this is another one from the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Mark Strauss from Chappaqua, New York, where the Clintons have a house. It's called Cancer Prayer. Do you know anything about Dr. Strauss?

JOHN HALBERG: I don't know much about him. I'm going to guess, though, that he is an oncologist the way he writes about cancer. And I think this poem really captures our conversation last week in a different way. We talked about cancer and what's being done about that. And this, I think, just nicely illustrates how one can use poetry to capture the human side. And in this case, the side of a provider and how he or she might feel in treating patients with a terrible disease.

Tell me, please, how to be cavalier

After 20 years of treating patients with arrogant adjectives,

With verbs too powerful to be comprehensible

And nouns with such innocent sounds

Lymphoma, melanoma, breast cancer

That they shatter my ears

Hope is sometimes a puddle of stale rainwater for a parched mouth

Though I must continue to pray

I pray that the power that makes genetic strands proliferate aberrantly allows us to reverse it

To discover a gene insertion to correct each untoward event

And if not, then just today,

I pray that the little boy with Wilms tumor will have no side effects from his chemotherapy

That this one woman with ovary cancer in room 1122 will have a complete remission

The word cure, dear god, is always near my lips,

Though I have been constrained from saying it aloud

Allow me, at least, to think it

TOM CRANN: That's called Cancer Prayer by Dr. Mark Strauss. And, John, does that ring true, that doctor's feeling that very emotional undertone to the sort of clinical words there? Does that ring true for you?

JOHN HALBERG: It does, I think so often in our busy clinical days, we almost don't allow ourselves to think it much. I know that before I enter a room and if I know that that particular visit is a visit in which I will be sharing some profound news, some sad news, a diagnosis, perhaps. I do pause and collect my thoughts. And I know many of my colleagues do the same thing. And you just have to put that professional armor on and go in.

And I think there's been a sense perhaps that you need to be super strong, that you can't show emotion, that you can't cry. And I don't think that that's really as true today as it once was, perhaps. But everyone deals with it differently, of course. And I think this, I get the sense in reading this poem that, this is somebody who's very reflective, who probably is very professional, and that sort of comes through in this poetry as a way of releasing some of that emotion.

TOM CRANN: So in your practice, the lessons you can learn from literature like this, how important is that compared to the lessons you learn from the scientific literature?

JOHN HALBERG: I think part of me would like to respond to that by saying that it's an equal measure. That it's 50/50. That it's as much art as it is science. And I think for many of us who love clinical practice, we love working with people, we are in medicine because it lets us touch the human condition in ways that we couldn't otherwise touch it, as it were. I think it really is an important, essential part of it.

I don't read poetry on a daily basis. I don't read about-- I don't read literature every single day. But I think that having that sensibility, though, is so much a part of what we do. And for many, many people, it becomes a release. It becomes a way of expressing oneself when it's not otherwise appropriate to do so or possible to do so. So I really do feel that there is an intimate connection between the art and science of medicine.

TOM CRANN: And there are truths and insights there for you.

JOHN HALBERG: Yes, there are.

TOM CRANN: Dr. John Hallberg, thanks for sharing those truths and insights.

JOHN HALBERG: It was my pleasure.

TOM CRANN: Medical poetry with us here on All Things Considered. Dr. John Hallberg is our regular medical analyst and a physician and family practice at the University of Minnesota. To hear another poem from John, go to our website at minnesotapublicradio.org.