Poetry plays different roles for different people, and this poem plays two in particular for me. First, reading and writing poetry often provides space to reflect, process, analyze, and sometimes agonize over my clinical work. This includes mistakes. In “A Brief Guide on Mouth to Mouth,” I wrestle with guilt, shame, and fear from bad outcomes. The poem's narrative is actually a fictional synthesis of two patient encounters that still haunt me years later. The form of any poem should serve its subject, and here the woven repetition of this specific form, the pantoum, mirrors how my mind returns repeatedly to these patients: each line appears twice (the second and fourth line become the first and third in the subsequent stanza) until the end, where two lines from the first stanza reappear to “close” the poem (asamonitor.pub/3hHVKaf). This required repetition also allows for variation via grammar or context...
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March 2023
A Brief Guide on Mouth to Mouth
Douglas L. Hester, MD, MFA
Douglas L. Hester, MD, MFA
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ASA Monitor March 2023, Vol. 87, 19.
Citation
Douglas L. Hester; A Brief Guide on Mouth to Mouth. ASA Monitor 2023; 87:19 doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ASM.0000921976.35681.f7
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