Zauner was 25 when her mother was diagnosed with an aggressive, late-stage, mid-life cancer. Zauner was a rebellious child, resentful of Umma’s version of tough love. Growing up the lone Asian student in her Oregon community, she felt both othered at school and an outsider among her mother’s Seoul relatives when she visited them each summer. Just as she was beginning to appreciate her Korean heritage and understand her mother’s love, she learned about Umma’s diagnosis.   

The first half of the memoir exuberantly brings to life scenes from Zauner’s childhood and her brief post-college years as a musician in New York City. Surprisingly, without hesitation, she paused her makeshift career and flew west to care intensively for her mother. Attempting to heroically save Umma, Zauner zealously learned to prepare the native foods they shared. “I would radiate joy and positivity,” Zauner pledged. “I would learn to cook for her—all the things she loved to eat, and I would single-handedly keep her from withering away” (69). Her optimistic culinary efforts produce a poetry of exacting descriptions of the flavors and textures and preparation of those foods. It’s grimly ironic that the chemotherapy her mother endured wiped out her ability to taste or digest Zauner’s loving offerings of health.  

The second half turns from living with Umma to living without her. Wishing to sustain her bond with her mother as Zauner grieved, she continued preparing her Korean family’s recipes. Walking down H Mart’s redolent aisles released “waves” of sorrow that mark the enduring ebb and flow of her grief. Unsuccessful with conventional therapy, she found cooking the best form of self-care: “Every dish I cooked exhumed a memory. Every scent and taste brought me back for a moment to an unravaged home. Knife-cut noodles in chicken broth took me back to lunch at Myeong Dong Gyoja . . . The kalguksu so dense from the rich beef stock and starchy noodles it was nearly gelatinous. My mother ordering more and more refills of their famously garlic-heavy kimchi” (212-213). An image of abundance in the midst of loss.

Zauner’s detailed descriptions of cooking and consuming invite readers to her table, reminding us—as previous celebrated writers have—of the power of the senses to evoke memory and the power of food to strengthen human bonds. Food also powers Zauner’s self-understanding and the unexpected transformational love for her mother: “The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me . . . If I could not be with my mother, I would be her” (223-224).  

Zauner’s writing is itself active and effervescent. Through her grief, she holds a steady, unflinching gaze on cancer and death. As she writes candidly about her family, Zauner is critically reflective about her own life. Her writerly achievement is the immediacy of her felt experiences, her grief and her joys made palpable. “Let me feel this,” she courageously writes, dismissing her Korean family’s admonitions to withhold tears (202). An unforgettable image of the process of loving transformation that Zauner experienced unfolds in her description of making the Korean staple kimchee. It is a slow, exacting process of fermenting cabbage that at first strikes her as “controlled death” because “[l]eft alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether” (223). 

As if miraculously, a few years after Umma died, Zauner’s itinerant music career took on a new life. The band she has fronted, Japanese Breakfast, recorded the album Psychopop with a song she wrote about her mother, “In Heaven.” Then they toured the U.S. and South Korea. Although her mother was skeptical about a musical career, Zauner imagined that Umma would be “glad that I had finally found a place where I belonged” (233). 

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
Michelle Zauner

Publisher Alfred A Knopf
Place Published New York
Edition 2021
Page Count 239

Web photo by Portuguese Gravit

The trajectories of tuberculosis (TB) and opera met in the mid-nineteenth century most notably with the production of La Traviata in 1853, and then La Bohème near the century’s end. With eminent scholars Linda and Michael Hutcheon, we talk about how these trajectories converged and how these resulting two operas then brought attention to the medical effects of the infection and the sociocultural influences on its spread. We also discuss how the discovery of germ therapy during the time between the staging of these operas affected the way social behaviors changed accordingly, that is, from understanding TB as hereditary to understanding it as infectious. We play audio clips from parts of the operas pertinent to perspectives provided. 

A big thanks to Drs Linda and Michael Hutcheon who in addition to providing their expertise and perspectives during the podcast, also contributed ideas for the production. 

Links
– The combined bio for Linda and Michael Hutcheon.
– The New York Metropolitan Opera on-demand video service where you can get access to high-quality video productions of La Traviata and La Bohème among many other operas and performances. (There could be a 7-day free trial available).
– Homer Simpson performing as Rudolpho in La Bohème singing Oh Dio! Mimi!
– We covered the effects of TB as an aesthetic ideal of beauty during the nineteenth century as represented in paintings earlier in episode 5.

Audio Credits
La Traviata
Preludio (National Philharmonic Orchestra; Richard Bonynge cond London Records 1979)
Prendi, Quest’È L’Immagine (Orchestra of the Opera House, Rome; Tullio Serafin cond; Victoria de los Angeles (Violetta); EMI Records Ltd 1960; digitally remastered 1992)

La Bohème
O Soave Fanciulla (Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan cond; Mirella Freni (Mimi); Luciano Pavarotti (Rudolfo); Rolando Panerai (Marcello); London Records 1972)
Si. Mi Chiamono Mimi (ibid)
Mimi È Una Civetta (ibid)
Mimi È Tanto Malata! (ibid)

La Bohème photo from wikicommons

Based on the novel of the same name by André Aciman, this multilingual film took the world by storm, using three languages (French, Italian, and English) in the first five minutes. The resulting language barriers add to feelings of yearning established by the musical score, whose key elements originate from Sufjan Stevens (Futile Devices; Mystery of Love; Visions of Gideon). Music, language, and literature carry the work’s primary themes, namely those of precocity and sexuality. Elio embodies all three—his main hobbies include transcribing music, playing the piano, and reading. These themes are further captured by the symbol of the apricot, its relationship to precocity and sexuality explicitly discussed in the film. Furthermore, the denouement of the film, arrives through a figuratively rich and overtly sensual scene involving Elio and the summer stand-in of the apricot, the peach, (1:34:30-1:40:24), beautifully capturing the relationship between Elio’s intellectual maturity and emotional naïveté.

Controversy surrounds Call Me by Your Name, primarily regarding consent and age statutes. Although Elio is over the 1983 age of consent in Italy and most United States jurisdictions, his relationship with Oliver evokes discomfort. This speaks to the historical Western perception of gay relationships as predatory. Nonetheless, their relationship warrants some skepticism, particularly regarding age-based power dynamics. The Perlmans support and watch over their son as the relationship progresses, frequently checking in and pointing him to literary passages as points of reference. In this way, the film navigates a complicated and loaded social topic, particularly in the queer community.

Further depth is added by considering the historical context of the early 1980s. By 1983, the AIDS epidemic had globally taken hold, the virus only identified in France the May prior to the events of the film. “Gay cancer” was a widely used term for a rare and defining symptom of AIDS, singling out the Western community hardest hit at that time. The merciless, viral specter of death overshadowed the gay liberation movement of the previous decade. HIV is never mentioned in the film, but its presence must be known by Oliver, adding to his own hesitations and fears about his and Elio’s sexualities. 1983 was also rife with relevant political fallout: Gerry Studds––the first openly gay member of Congress––became embroiled in a scandal involving a relationship with a 17-year-old, and Bettino Craxi was elected as Italian Prime Minister, eventually leading to the collapse of the modern Italian political machine. Craxi plays a central role in the peripheral events of the film, his influence appearing on television and in conversations with dinner guests.

Call Me by Your Name is an evocative masterpiece, one of the few movies that I can watch repeatedly (cf. Heated Rivalry). Despite my inherent preference for novels, this film, far and away, manifests a beauty missing from its literary inspiration. The actors perform splendidly, the music deepens the emotional journey, and the cinematography transports the audience perfectly to the setting. Every time I watch it, I discover greater depth and fall in love with it more, even if I can never look at a peach the same way.

Call Me by Your Name 
Director: Luca Guadagnino 
Screenplay: James Ivory 
Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay (Critics’ Choice Awards); Best Male Lead [Chalamet] & Best Cinematography (Independent Spirit Awards); Outstanding Film-Wide Release (GLAAD Media Awards); Best Editing (Nastro d’Argento Awards & Golden Ciak Awards); Breakout Actor [Chalamet] (Gotham Independent Film Awards & Hollywood Film Awards)
Year 2017 
Studio Sony Pictures Classics 
Running Time (in minutes) 132 
Based on Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman 

Web image from Sony Pictures.

When the British band, The Who, released their double album, Tommy, in 1969, many of the songs in it became instant classics and served as anthems for the Baby Boomer generation ever since. The album was characterized as a “rock opera,” because when connected, the songs told the story of the “deaf, dumb, and blind kid,” Tommy. The storyline made possible subsequent musicals, first as a movie in 1975, and then as a Broadway play in 1993 and as a revival in 2024. Underlying the storyline in each of these genres are the psychiatric consequences of childhood trauma Tommy experiences. In this episode, we consider the psychiatric conditions Tommy exhibits through selected songs from the original Broadway production, and how they are used in education and training.

Dr. Anthony Tobia, who is the regional chair in the Department of Psychiatry at the Rutgers School of Medicine and is also the Service Chief of Psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health in New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Tobia also holds a secondary appointment in the Division of General Internal Medicine there. His interests and scholarly work include the value and application of merging popular culture and psychiatry. The Who’s Tommy is among the many cultural works he has found helpful in depicting psychiatric problems for purposes of teaching health professions students and practitioners, and others in roles helping people with mental illness.

Links
Original Broadway cast album of The Who’s Tommy, 1993
Background on The Who’s Tommy movie, 1975.
31 Knights of Halloween didactic at Rutgers during October.

The Clinic & The Person is a podcast developed by our editor Russell Teagarden to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide.

Feature image recreated by Medhum using Tommy’s poster found on Wikipedia Common.

Strauss and Schonberg were products of high German culture and were inspired by the notion of bildung, that man’s perfection is achievable by embracing the humanistic arts. Of all the elements of culture – visual arts, literature, sculpture, dance – for Germans, music was considered the ultimate and most noble embodiment of the human spirit. How could one maintain this enlightened vision of bildung after witnessing the dark years of the Third Reich? That is the tragedy that confronted these two men. Strauss, a non-Jew, had to reconcile his prestigious position in the German musical establishment and his social status with the need to toady up to the Nazi brass to save the lives of  members of  his family by marriage who were Jewish. He never renounced Hitler or the Nazi party. Schonberg, who earlier in his life followed Gustav Mahler’s lead  and converted out of Judaism to the Lutheran church, was still forced into exile to escape the Nazis, and thrived in a German expatriate community in Los Angeles. The world war reawakened his self-identity as a Jew and forced a reassessment of his relationship to his fellow Jews. Eichler sees Strauss’ Metamorphosen and Schonberg’s Survivor of Warsaw as timeless musical monuments to those who suffered and perished at the hands of the Nazis, works that gain their special power by being expressions of each man’s inner turmoil.

Britten and Shostakovich lived in an entirely different world than Strauss and Schonberg. Nonetheless, they too suffered though the ravages of the Second World War. Britten, a gay man and committed pacifist, never served in active military duty. But he witnessed the nightly bombings of England and the German artillery attacks along the coastline near where he lived. Shostakovich was alternatively celebrated and reviled by Stalin. He lived a life of continuous dread, trying to survive as a person and musician when a death sentence could come at a moment’s notice at the whim of the Great Leader. Britten was commissioned to write a musical piece to accompany the dedication of the Coventry Cathedral which had been nearly destroyed by a night-long Wehrmacht bombing raid; Shostakovich was inspired to write his 14^th Symphony after reading  Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s 1962 poem “Babi Yar”.  For Britten, the War Requiem was a pacifist’s response to the self-destructiveness of war and the grievous loss of a generation of young able-bodied men; Shostakovich’s work was his attempt to come to grips with the moral blindness of the Russian people who denied their complicity with the Nazi murder of 33,000 innocent Jewish men, women, and children at the ravine outside Kyiv in broad daylight, in one ghastly day.  

This overview hardly captures the dense description of these four men and the turbulent times they lived through. There are astonishing subplots and characters in each composer’s narrative. Eichler retells how Schonberg originally reached out to Serge Koussevitsky to premiere Survivor of Warsaw. When the conductor demurred, the inaugural concert ended up being performed by a community orchestra and choir in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When Britten toured the Displaced Person camps after World War II and played piano accompaniment with the violinist Yehudi Menuhin at Bergen Belsen, the intensity of his playing profoundly affected a young Venetian woman named Anita Lasker, who survived the Holocaust only because she had been enlisted to play in the inmates’ orchestra, directed by a colleague of Strauss and Schonberg. There is so much in Time’s Echo and the best advice is to allow yourself to be immersed in the book. 

Eichler is a precise and enthusiastic writer, and he fully captures the emotional toll of living through the two World Wars, in Germany, England, and Russia. The inhumanity of the trench warfare in World War I, the insane hatred driving the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people in Europe, the unprecedented destructiveness of World War II, the senseless starvation and killing of millions of Russians during the forced agricultural collectivizations and the German siege of Leningrad – all of these are depicted by Eichler in stark prose. 

There is so much to comment on. Let me focus on one point – Eichler’s assertion that music is the optimal way to memorialize events in the past. To begin, one might question the need to remember altogether. In Zachor (University of Washington Press, 1982), Yosef Dov Yerushalmi documents how important memory is to the Jewish people. History is not a simple record of dates and facts. Instead, history and memory are meant to bring the past to life and reinforce faith and commitment. But David Rieff, in the book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and its Ironies (Yale University Press, 2016), suggests that overemphasis on memory of past events can ensnare people in a web of accusations and counterclaims and weaken individual agency. And do the musical memorials composed by the four composers point a way forward to overcome the failings of the past or do they create an emotional trap? The swirling currents of hatred circling our world today give pause to any notion that the works of these composers have brought us any closer to a world of tolerance and peaceful coexistence.  

All of the senses participate in the formation of memory. Proust famously wrote about how the smell of a madeleine evoked deep-seated memories in one of his characters. Eichler gives pride of place to hearing and music. There is no question that hearing a particular popular song or piece of music often triggers recollection of pivotal moments in a person’s life. Eichler has a wonderful feeling for the musical compositions, which range from seven minutes to over an hour long and play such a central role in Time’s Echo. However, I wonder whether most of us can delve as deeply into the content and feelings articulated in a piece of music. It is not the evanescence of sound per se that makes me uncertain, because all sensory perceptions are transitory and both sights and sounds can be captured and reserved for posterity in photographs and recordings. But it is the complexity of classical music that I find daunting. In Rebecca Goldstein’s book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (Pantheon, 2010), there is a scene in which a math prodigy and his genius friends are sitting around and for entertainment, they challenge each other to sing variations of famous classical music pieces like a Bach prelude shifted up by a third, changed from the major key to minor, or starting from the middle and going backwards. Do we need to understand music with such precision to be moved by the complicated creations of Schonberg, Straus, Britten, and Shostakovich? I’ve listened to the four pieces of music discussed in the book, and though I was moved, I know I was not as appreciative as Eichler of their artistry and nuance.  

Three of the compositions were accompanied by text to focus and amplify the impact of the music. Some of the choices were straightforward, like the poem by Yevtushenko. But the selection of works by Wilfred Owen to accompany the War Requiem and the words that Schonberg wrote to be read during the performance of Survivor of Warsaw contribute greatly to the emotional power of the two works. So much to ponder, so much to learn.

Echoes lose their intensity as they bounce off surfaces and spread out in space. Eichler’s book does not echo, it resonates and amplifies. It is overflowing with content that touches on so many topics and issues. It activates each one and gets them vibrating, different frequencies, different pitches. In the end, Time’s Echo creates a symphony of ideas that we can all read and listen to, one glorious mixed metaphor

TIME’S ECHO
Jeremy Eichler
Knopf, 2023, 386 pp

Cortney Davis: The poems in Blinded Birds are startling and sometimes difficult to read. Can you talk about the process of writing such personal poems–how you considered the idea of “truth” in poetry as you were writing? 

B. Fulton Jennes: The poems in Blinded Birds are 100% autobiographical. One of the book’s reviewers called them “brutally honest,” and many people have told me they needed to stop reading to compose themselves before continuing (I guess that’s a compliment!). The intent was not to shock but, rather, to heal. For me, the only path to that healing was complete, unfiltered honesty. As we say in the program, you’re only as sick as your secrets, and I’d been holding in those poisonous secrets for far too long. Poet Anne Carson might insist that art is not therapy, but it was for me in writing these poems.  

CD:  Blinded Birds is your first poetry collection, but you’ve been writing award winning poems for some time. When did you begin your journey as a poet? 

BFJ: When I was a child my grandmother used to read to me from my father’s copy of A Child’s Garden of Verse; I loved the rhymes and the musicality of the poems. Also, my mom wanted to be a writer when she was in high school. She used to write poems with me in the morning before I went to school. Of course, I took all the credit for them with my teacher! 

CD:  And now you’re writing poems that are like explosions on the page, visceral and stripped-bare. How did you come to write these particular poems? Was there a triggering event? 

BFJ: It was after we discovered my daughter Mallory’s heroin addiction. Mal was home from college and preparing to begin overseas graduate studies when we found her overdosed and, essentially, dead on her bedroom floor. Fortunately, I was able to resuscitate her until the EMTs arrived, so she lived and entered a residential treatment program. But processing all that happened in the months that followed–including Mallory’s subsequent relapse and years of active addiction–threw both my husband and me into a state of perpetual PTSD. It also evoked memories of my own addiction to alcohol, including during Mal’s infancy (I relapsed when her pediatrician advised me to drink beer because my milk production insufficient and she was losing weight. I’m an addict–who was I to argue?). Additionally, she and I have both been treated for depression since childhood (I was on Valium when I was 12, for God’s sake–and Mallory’s depression manifested much earlier), and my mother suffered from horrible depression, most likely untreated bipolar disorder, throughout my childhood. So all of those factors congealed during this period–the memories, the fears, the regrets, the anger, the sorrow. The only way I could manage was to write my way through. 

CD:  Writing the poems must have been an extraordinary experience. Your poems about saving Mallory’s life (“Eating Dinner, After You Died,” “The Waitings”) begin in despair and end in hope. You might have kept these poems to yourself but chose to offer them publically in a collection. How did the publication of this book affect you emotionally and how have the poems affected your family?  

BFJ:  Let’s start with my family, first and foremost my daughter since she is a central character in the collection’s story arc. By the time I was ready to submit Blinded Birds to publishers, Mallory was in relatively long-term recovery–in fact, she had gone to graduate school to become a certified addictions counselor. I would never have published the poems without her permission, and she readily gave it, realizing not only the personal importance of telling our story but also the potential of connecting with others and offering them hope as a result since the final poems in the collection celebrate our joint recovery. Sadly, my mother–the third central character in the book–never achieved relief from her depression before she died. She was of a generation that clung to the belief that depression is a character flaw, not a treatable medical condition–much as addiction is still shrouded in stigma today. My husband was behind the book 100%. The rest of the family, including many who never realized our ongoing struggles with mental illness, were initially shocked but ultimately supportive. We got a lot of, “I’m so sorry–I never knew,” which just shows how well we hid the truth for so long.  

How did the book’s publication affect me emotionally? I think both Mallory and I feel really empowered by having the truth out in the open for others to learn from and, perhaps, glean hope from. Every time I finish a reading, people from the audience approach me to share their stories, especially ones about their own children who suffered, or suffer, from addiction. I can feel the healing they’ve received from knowing they’re not alone. It’s therapeutic for all of us–the giver and the receivers of hope. 

CD: Your poems seem to be “spot on” in examining the cultural and societal issues so many families struggle with today. It has been said that the personal is universal, and your very personal poems speak directly to these issues. Was that something you considered when writing, that your work might help others understand the genesis and effects of addiction? 

BFJ:  It’s only in studying how others react to the poems that I’ve developed a keener awareness of society’s misevaluation of addiction and addicts. However, while drafting the poems, I definitely took a “genetics as culprit” approach. The three of us recently had genetic testing done, which revealed that both Mallory and I have the A1 allele. In study after study, that mutation on the brain’s dopamine receptors has been very closely linked to early-onset depression, severe alcoholism, ADHD, intractable PTSD, and a heightened risk for addiction to opioids. There are two poems at the beginning of the book that highlight the fury I feel at being a victim of genetics: “Blinded Birds” and “To an Allele.” And I wish I could have shared those findings with my mother who no doubt blamed herself rather than her genetic inheritance for her lifelong depression. (Her father was severely alcoholic and despondent; two of her siblings committed suicide.) 

CD: When you understood the genetic component of depression and addiction did you feel relieved somehow of guilt or blame? I very much admire your poem “Triple Helix” that helps you “pry apart the DNA / that twists our fates together . . . .” 

BFJ:  Vindicated, perhaps, but not guiltless. There’s another poem in the book titled “Every Bad Thing That Ever Happened to Me Happened When I Was Drunk,” and that’s pretty much the truth of it. And not just the bad things that happened to me, but the bad things I imposed upon others, most notably my daughter. I relapsed twice during her childhood: once when she was an infant (the poem “Alky Mommy” speaks to that) and again when she was a teen–the two most impressionable periods in a child’s development. During those times, I was unavailable to Mallory on many levels. That’s why there’s so much regret and sorrow mixed with anger in discovering the genetic connection to addiction–my genes might have opened the door for me, but I’m the one who wrecked the room. 

CD: Yet you did not leave the room in shambles. The last several poems in Blinded Birds speak to healing and resolution. In the book’s last poem, “Hovenweep,” you write “And then you, a damaged daughter, saved me. / And then I, a mother damned, saved you.” Do you have a favorite poem among those that bring the book to a close with hope?   

BFJ: Yes! My favorite is “Return,” the second-to-last poem in the collection. I still connect to it, feel its power, whenever I read it. In it, I metaphorically compare recovery to a tree reawakening after a long winter, a long night. Isn’t that exactly what it feels like, the first time you wake up and don’t ache for a drink or a fix? You feel alive again. It’s remarkable. Like being reborn. 

CD: You often give well attended readings. Is it difficult for you to share such emotional and revealing poems?  

BFJ: Not at all. As I’ve mentioned, I can feel the healing that’s happening in the room–both for me and for those in attendance. Sure, there are some who can’t scurry away quickly enough after the reading (!), but I tell myself that they’re the ones who most needed to hear the poems. 

CD: Yes, sometimes we experience something–a poem that cuts too close perhaps–and it’s often only later that we realize how we’ve been touched, been changed. Has writing Blinded Birds changed you or your family in any way?    

BFJ: Personally, I’ve gained confidence on many levels since the book’s publication–as a poet, as a public speaker, as a truth-teller and giver of hope. I’m unafraid–unlike all those years I felt hidden and hurt by the truth. I think everyone in the family feels pretty much the same. 

CD: Once in a lecture years ago at NYU the poet Yehuda Amichai said that in war, poems can’t save us. Do you think poetry can save us? Can it bring about changes in our society?   

BFJ: It certainly has saved me on more than one occasion. So on a personal level, absolutely: poetry saves. But I see the powerful poems being written about the atrocities occurring in so many places today, and while those poems have impacted my sense of urgency and compassion, I don’t see that power playing out on a political level. I think the effect of art–whether poetry, song, or visual art–is limited to moving a pre-disposed audience. Sadly, they “preach to the choir”–albeit powerful and affective preaching. 

CD: And now that Blinded Birds has found wide readership, tell me about your latest book. You’ve written again about your family, but this time about a special and specific person. 

BFJ: Yes–FLOWN (Porkbelly Press, 2024) is an elegy-in-verse for my late sister, who died of metastatic breast cancer in July of 2022. It’s a chapbook of very short poems, written during the final months of Harriet’s illness and the days and weeks just after her passing. It’s raw, very raw. I still relive the anguish of those days when I read the poems. 

CD: how was writing this book different from—or similar to—writing Blinded Birds? 

BFJ: In terms of differences, the biggest one was that FLOWN was written while the events were transpiring, rather than in retrospect. It was a period of deep recollection and reflection, sussing–intuiting really–the metaphoric connections between Harriet’s illness (which we knew from the first diagnosis was terminal) and events from our childhood. There were four years between us, so I learned a great deal from her when we were young, just as she taught me so much about life and about the process of dying with her illness and eventual passing. 

Both books are rich in symbolism, which I guess was the greatest similarity in writing them. The title and title poem of Blinded Birds reference the old Flemish tradition of vinkensport, in which chaffinches being trained to compete in contests that require them to repeat their distinctive song the most times per hour were once blinded with hot needles to minimize distraction during competition. Cruel, right? I used that analogy to illustrate the cruelty of genetics in predetermining our propensity for addiction–and, yes, of any god who would create genetic mutations in the first place and use them for his “sport.” That metaphor echoes through the poems, just as the symbols of holes (including graves) and birds make repeated appearances throughout FLOWN.  

CD:  And one question about your poetic process. Do you have any special inspirations or habits that help you create? Sharon Olds once said that she finds inspiration in walking across water. Some poets have elaborate pre-writing rituals, or must have silence, or can only write at a table at Starbucks.   

BFJ:  For me, it’s hard to find a place quiet enough to write, to achieve that feeling of being completely removed from the world. So I usually draft my poems wearing headphones and listening to either Philip Glass or to theta wave-inducing music online. Both are very hypnotic for me and allow me to reach my Zen place.  

CD:  As one of your fans, I’m grateful for the words and images that arise from your Zen place! Finally, is there a message or a realization that you hope readers will take away after reading Blinded Birds?  

BFJ: First, addiction and depression are genetic “gifts” that no one asks to receive. They are treatable conditions, deserving of society’s and the medical community’s non-judgmental compassion and support, not its dismissal and neglect. Second, there is always, always hope. The path to recovery is fraught with physical and mental anguish, blame-placing, and failure, but keep going. Keep going. Keep going. And help others on their path, too.  

B. Fulton Jennes is Poet Laureate Emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she also served for many years as poet-in-residence at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have appeared in CALYX, Comstock Review, Extreme Sonnets II, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, Tupelo Quarterly, and many other journals and anthologies. Jennes’ poem “Glyphs of a Gentle Going” was awarded the 2022 Lascaux Prize; another poem, “Father to Son,” won the 2023 New Millennium Award. In 2021, her poem “From the Room of an Unknown Girl” was awarded the Leslie McGrath Prize. Jennes’ first collection of poems, Blinded Birds (Finishing Line Press), received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. Another chapbook, FLOWN—an elegy for her late sister—will be published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. She lives in Ridgefield with husband Chuck. 

We consider “illness as loss” through three different scenarios from Lionel Shriver’s novel, So Much For That. The three scenarios are: sociopsychological, financial, and clinical. We focus on how the literary novel form isolates these scenarios and offers fully reflective accounts of how people can be affected by them. We also note how literary fiction can be the only or best medium for subjects often too sensitive for public forums such as whether money can be an object in health care decisions. We spend some time distinguishing illness as what people experience subjectively from a particular health problem, and disease as the pathophysiological basis for a particular health problem. Dan talks about how illness as loss is a useful concept for discerning the help people may need, and how using the word “loss” can be a valuable tool for helping them.

Citation:
Shriver L. So Much For That. New York; HarperCollins, 2010.

Links:
Russell Teagarden’s blog pieces mentioned in the podcast:
Review of So Much For That

A comparison of biomedical and literary descriptions of familial dysautonomia
Distinguishing disease, illness, and sickness
Elements of illness
Illness as loss

Recommendations:
Rick Beato interview with Keith Jarret, recommended by inhouse musical director and cultural editor, Benedict Teagarden
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Jean-Dominique Bauby (memoir and movie)
On His Blindness, John Milton, poem, recommended by inhouse rhetorician and literary editor, Alexis Teagarden

The Clinic & The Person is a podcast developed by our editor Russell Teagarden to summon or quicken the attention of health care professionals, their educators, researchers and others to the interests and plights of people with specific health problems aided through knowledge and perspectives the humanities provide.

Feature photoo by Andrik Langfield