One Word: Poems

by Marc J. Straus

One Word is the first collection of poems by physician Marc J. Straus. Its unusual combination of poetic craft and medical expertise produces striking, uncommon work--work informed by a keen sense of human vulnerability. These remarkable poems fill a void in the body of imaginative work relating to illness.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 1994

About the author

Marc J. Straus is the author of 4 poetry collections, 3 from Tri-Quarterly Northwestern University Press. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Robert Penn Warren Award in the Humanities from Yale. His poems have appeared in most of the leading literary journals in the U.S. He is an oncologist and former Chairman of Oncology and Professor of Medicine. He has authored some 100 scientific papers and edited three textbooks on lung cancer. He is the recipient of Boston’s Young Leader Award previously given to John F. Kennedy. Marc, and his wife Livia, have been avid collectors of contemporary art since age 20, focusing on new discoveries. Their collection has now had eleven museum exhibits and they are listed among the top collectors in the U.S. Marc lectures worldwide on building an art collection. He has written nearly 50 articles on art. In 2004 Marc and Livia founded Hudson Valley MOCA, a public museum in Peekskill, NY, one hour north of NYC, in an economically challenged multicultural community. HVMOCA has been the spark for the revitalization of the area. In 2011, Marc opened an art gallery on the Lower Eastside of Manhattan, MARC STRAUS, which represents 24 artists from 16 countries and is among the leading galleries today.

Reviews

[Sierra 🦇 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 🌟!

I read this poetry collection while teaching it to my students. We used it as the basis for learning rhetorical analysis and i think the students liked it? It was hard for them at times (oh my god, i have to read poems AND do research when i dont know a word 😱) but, once we got past that, I feel like we had a lot of fun unpacking the poems and looking at all the rhetorical moves.

Several of the poems were deeply moving and brought a tear to my eye. In particular “The List” hit me hard and made me think of my partner and how hard it would be to deal with a terminal illness when you’ve loved someone for your whole life. WHEW the keyboard is getting a little blurry.

Straus really does a fabulous job trying to bridge the emotional gap between the medical world and poetry. He’s so observant and can really capture a lot of detail in just a few lines. He also does a great job representing different communities and appealing to those audiences.

I think it also helped that im so obsessed with The Pitt, so how medical professionals relate to the general public is big on my mind.

If you like medical things and poetry, I would definitely recommend this! Im glad i taught it this semester, it was a really nice break from only talking about writing studies.

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this on a library bookshelf. Straus is an oncologist, and his poems are mostly about disease, decline, death, and the difficult conversations around these subjects. They are not depressing, but they are heavy.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

The one poem I remembered from having read this book several years ago was "An Elephant Crossed the Road." The longest poem in the book, it's structured as a series of two-line statements from various recurring voices. It all comes together on re-reading, and I found that extra work very rewarding with this poem. Most of the others are "get-it-on-the-first-take" observations, vignettes, sometimes portraits of (presumably) patients (Straus is a physician). Empathetic and spare, these poems resonate differently, but I did enjoy re-reading the collection. Here's "Twelve Words":

TWELVE WORDS

I even dream of calling you,
to discuss my options, as it were,

to ask if the pain in the shoulder
is related to the mass in the neck

which seems less swollen, even though
it occurred just after the drugs

which may have caused the nausea
and certainly precipitated the weight loss

(not that I had any leeway),
unlike the hair loss, which I agree

is merely vanity in a man my age,
but it focused on the tracheostomy

which I press with my thumb to speak, but
I'm never understood, and yet

only you come by and talk to me
without shouting as others do,

suggesting that I am also deaf
(which I am certainly not),

so that I must respond by writing
on this yellow pad in bold script

knowing that your time is valuable
needing to see many people,

so I have promised to limit myself
to twelve words each day.