Otherwise

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "Otherwise," by Jane Kenyon. Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1947. She earned a BA from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an MA in 1972. That same year, Kenyon married professor-poet Donald Hall, whom she had met while studying at the University of Michigan.

Kenyon published 4 books of poetry during her lifetime and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981. In December 1993, Kenyon and Hall were the subject of the Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers documentary, A Life Together. Kenyon struggled with depression. She was named poet laureate of New Hampshire in 1995 and died from leukemia in April of that year.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 27 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.