ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses intimate connections between poetry and medicine, drawing on anaesthetics as a case study. Anaesthetics, including the arc of patient care and attention to rhythms and precision, has much in common with the poem, including arcs of thought, rhythms, pauses, and resonances. Poetry is in us, of us, and around us. Poetry is a way of meaning-making in a complicated, confusing world, which includes not only loss, terror, and hatred but also joy, gratitude, and love. While for many centuries, poetry has imbued the writings and oral traditions of religions around the world, we may lose our comfort with poetry as we progress through education. Poetry itself can feel confusing, and the effort to live with a poem, to mull it over and accept its ambiguities can feel burdensome, as well as tangential to life. Poetry at first sight seems particularly at odds with scientific medicine. But, as this chapter shows, with the arcs, rhythms, and precision of anaesthetic work as the focus, there is productive confluence between the spheres of poetry and medicine.
