Abstract
There is an analogy between a scientific approach to medicine in which the patient ultimately becomes an object of study rather than a whole person, and a post/modern aesthetic in literature in which the subject has little or no agency in a chaotic linguistic universe. Raymond Carver died of cancer in 1988, and in both his pre- and post-diagnostic poetry there is humanistic lyricism that contributes to re-establishing empathic bonds between readers and characters, and to re-humanizing the patient as a whole person in the context of contemporary health institutions. Close readings of poems with descriptions of the autopsy room and of patient-doctor relations bring out the medical humanism in Carver's verse.
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Notes
Carver, All of Us. Subsequent references to this work appear in the text. Carver poems cited in this article are from All of Us and reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc. and Tess Gallagher.
The most thorough study of Carver's poems to date is Arthur Bethea's Technique and Sensibility in the Fiction and Poetry of Raymond Carver (New York and London: Routledge, 2001). For individual articles that treat the poetry see, for example, Greg Kuzma, “Ultramarine: Poems That Almost Stop the Heart,” Michigan Quarterly Review 27(2) (Spring 1988) 355–363 and Harold Schweizer, “The Very Short Stories of Raymond Carver,” College Literature 21(2) (1994) 126—131.
Stull, “Beyond Hopelessville,” 7–8.
Brown, “Raymond Carver and Postmodern Humanism,” 126–127.
Anderson, “Literature and Medicine,” p. 39. All subsequent references to this work appear in the text.
See, for example, Stull's discussion of “A Small, Good Thing” on pp. 11–13 of “Beyond Hopelessville.” Other critics have commented on the move towards a more Christian sense of communion in Carver's later stories. See, for example, Nelson Hatchcock, “‘The Possibility of Resurrection:’ Re-Vision in Carver's ‘Feathers’ and ‘Cathedral,’” Studies in Short Fiction 28(1) (Winter 1991) 31–39 and Kathleen Westfall Shute, “Finding the Words: The Struggle for Salvation in the Fiction of Raymond Carver,” The Hollins Critic 24(5) (December 1987) 1–9.
Coles, “Teaching Raymond Carver,” 224
Graham, “Metapathography,” 73.
Ibid, 72.
Carver was known as a compulsive reviser who pared down and honed his works incessantly and there are multiple versions of several of his stories and poems. “Art is made to seem effortless, but it takes some work,” he stated—or rather understated—in an interview. See Marshall Bruce Gentry and William L. Stull, eds. Conversations with Raymond Carver (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990) 25.
Graham, 83.
Moxham, “Reverence and the Dissecting Room,” 95.
Ibid.
In an interview, Kasia Boddy questioned Carver about Williams’ influence on his early poetry, to which Carver replied, “He was my hero.” See Conversations with Raymond Carver, 201.
For a detailed discussion of the hand motif in this poem, see William H. Race's “Some Visual Priamels from Sappho to Richard Wilbur and Raymond Carver,” Classical and Modern Literature 20(4) (2000) 3–17.
References
C. Anderson, Literature and Medicine: Why Should the Physician Read … or Write? In Literature and Science: Theory and Practice. Ed. S Peterfreund (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990) 33–58.
A. A. Brown, Raymond Carver and Postmodern Humanism.Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 31(2) (1990): 125–136.
R. Carver, All of Us: The Collected Poems (London: Harvill Press, 1996).
R. Coles, Teaching Raymond Carver. The American Poetry Review 22(1) (1993): 23–25.
P. W. Graham, Metapathography: Three Unruly Texts. Literature and Medicine 16(1) (1997): 70–87.
B. Moxham, Reverence and the Dissecting Room. Journal of Medical Ethics 27 (2001): 95.
W. L. Stull, Beyond Hopelessville: Another Side of Raymond Carver. Philological Quarterly 64 (1985): 1–15.
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Kleppe, S.L. Medical Humanism in the Poetry of Raymond Carver. J Med Humanit 27, 39–55 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-9002-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-005-9002-5