Abstract

In 1997, the poet Judy Rowe Michaels was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Over the ensuing 20-plus years, she has published four books of poetry and experienced six recurrences of the disease. This double corpus—the body of literary work produced by a body affected by illness, diagnosis, treatment, remission, and recurrence—provides rich insight into experiences of health, disease, and medical care. But I find Michaels's poetry especially significant because it also offers a means to examine what poetry does, and doesn't do, when it intersects with medicine. As a practitioner of medical humanities, I teach and write about how content and approaches from the humanities can deepen our...