Videos

Patients rely on the companionship and kindness of nurses now more than ever, and these poem selections reflect that.

Kindness Toward Patients

Maya Angelou’s words remind us to care for and support one another.

Maya Angelou

Dr Berlin recites sentiments close to his heart. 

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Is a doctor a healer, a confidante, a priest or rabbi, a turner of textbook pages, or a combination of all?


On Being a Doctor

Articles

Sheltered in Place

The words are no less fitting now than when this piece was written at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Sacred Daily Lives

Wake up, arise from the fog, and face a new post-op day.

The Valkyrie

The Air in Front of Him

The musical prodigy is believed to have had a hyperthymic temperament, but he was also vulnerable to sweeping bouts of depression and guilt. Psychiatrist and virtuoso Richard Kogan, MD, puts music to storytelling, to explain the phenomenon of genius.


Creativity and Psychiatry: Leonard Bernstein

We come for freedom and the chance to live the American dream.

The Hard-Working Immigrant

Let spring training not be a mere memory.

Slivers of Hope: Maxine Kumin

A million doctors on fire, three million scorched nurses beside them, burned out as the flames progress. 

Progress

Grandpa Murray, rags to riches, American big shot, the man who dreamt even bigger for his first grandson when he placed a doctor’s bag in my crib . . . the proudest man
at my med school graduation.

Immigrant

Frank A. Clark, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor, University of South Carolina School of Medicine – Greenville, SC, presents a timely slice of poetic history.

Chocolate-Flavored PTSD

Fangs dripping of bigotry hasten to attack human black deer. Such is a line in the work of this African American psychiatrist.

Runner’s Paradox

Drama for the day, the telephone rings, spring blossoms, senior year is sad, Mother Earth takes revenge, praying for Sully to land us on the Hudson . . .

Coughs That Echo Across the World

Dr Berlin offers salve to the soul with a recitation of "Let Evening Come," by Jane Kenyon, and then some.

Let Evening Come: An Invocation

When the AIDS epidemic was at its peak, Dr Berlin wrote his own version of "Spring and All," in which he speaks directly to the original author, Wayne Carlos Williams. There are parallels to coronavirus in these works.

The Road Home From the Hospital

A virtuoso concert pianist and psychiatrist's "play" on the role of music in healing and the influence of psychological and medical factors on the creative output of the great composers in music history.

Tchaikovsky: Music and Melancholy

In this series of recitations, Dr Richard Berlin will present a poetry with special meaning for all of us, as we cope with the COVID-19 crisis. He continues the theme of praising our nursing colleagues with Dorianne Laux's poem "Nurse."

Poetry

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