The Unexpected Poetry of Medical Terminology

Perhaps the last place one might hope to encounter poetry is in the medical lexicon, so maligned as it often is for its complexity and foreignness. From the inscrutability of its many acronyms to its terms for body parts based on the names of obscure anatomists, medicalese may seem dry and sometimes even intentionally designed to distance, self-aggrandize, and bewilder. What a surprise, then, to encounter “Love Letter to Medicine,” in which the speaker is enthralled (even if a little facetiously) by the ironic beauty inherent in such dramatic, yet clinical, language as “the electromotive force/of my poor, hypertrophied heart.” Yes, our hearts swell as we too “mount the wings of the sphenoid” and journey through the physical body that is expressed so romantically we begin to see beyond linguistic alienation and into the deep love for medicine that must have somehow informed the creators of such sonically and visually delightful lingo as “Bertin’s columns” and “membranous labyrinth.” More than just the Latin roots of many of its medical terms that impart a feeling of oratorical graciousness, the poem’s personalized address to Iatros (the Greek word for physician) and its soaring, almost exaggerated traditional musicality also surface the sensuality in such intimate structures as “your carotid bodies” and “ovarian trumpets”—even the “daring sciatic notch” feels playfully sensual. The juxtaposition here of the time-honored diction of love poetry and medicine’s version of somatic expertise reminds us that however we describe what’s inside, ultimately we all share the same imaginative and inventive tongue.