ABSTRACT
Much has been written about how poetry can be of use to medicine and medical education, privileging an instrumental perspective. But what might medicine contribute to poetry beyond instrumental ‘subject matter’? Medicine can bring body to disembodied words, specific context to abstractions, and a diagnostic imperative that highlights poetry’s parallel ability to diagnose cultural symptoms. But medicine and poetry are co-embroiled in life itself. Poetry is present; poetry has a life because it is part of life as much as medicine is part of life. Poetry is breath, where medicine is how that breath is maintained with quality. This chapter first develops as a frame the instrumentalism governing the use of poetry in medical education. Then it will consider the instrumental nature of ‘What can medicine do for poetry?, concluding that the question is sponsored by an originary misapprehension of what poetry is and does. The article then considers how a very complex flow of exchange occurs between poetry and medicine not only in education contexts but in a more general sense. To provide context, the article examines the uses of poetry in the first year of publication of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
