ABSTRACT
Two paradoxes haunt this book. First, the general case versus the specific instance: we invariably make claims for generalisations (as do both evidence-based and narrative-based medicine), yet clinical practice is a case of a particular instance, idiosyncratic and embedded in shifting contexts. Second, poetry is essentially useless and yet we spend a whole book praising its virtues. The paradox of the essential uselessness of poetry is developed in this chapter order to resist inevitably dogmatic instrumentalist uses in medical spaces. We clear room for poetry to be itself in order for it to deign to be of service. Ambiguity, a concept introduced much earlier and developed fulsomely in Chapter 11, is brought forward again in a playfully ambiguous way so as to enact what thinking poetically can do for healthcare practitioners. We engage with William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity in both playful and ironic ways as a map that precedes the territory. Empson does not so much describe ambiguities as construct them.
