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A Stranger's Heart: Poems by a Critical Care Physician
With his debut poetry collection, A Stranger's Heart, Philip J. Cozzi joins the ranks of physician poets, enhancing this tradition and offering fresh perspectives of the patient and the curer. These poems shimmer, displaying imaginative range and verbal dexterity. Cozzi's acute sense of empathy informs his work, whether the speaker is contemplating an orange "waiting in a bowl on a kitchen island" or, more poignantly, preparing his beloved mother for her deathbed. In his poem, "Language Line," Cozzi ". . . and you/lashed to the mast of the cell phone, / learn love translates to something carnal, /a drowning, a catastrophic craving." Reading this book is a tonic and an inspiration for us all.
118 pages, Paperback
Published June 22, 2022
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October 6, 2025
Until recently, I was unaware that there existed a subset of poets referred to as “physician poets”. These medical professionals have been successfully navigating the intersection of poetry and healing since at least Hippocrates. Their estimable literary lineage runs from antiquity, through John Keats, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and finally the author of this slender volume. To me, this all makes sense now, since poetry and medicine have the same objective: to help the body heal, even as the soul is nourished.
Many people, including me in earlier years, claim to find all poetry — both classical and modern — either emotionally inaccessible, or simply incomprehensible. Neither is the case with these poems, nor are they merely dressed-up nursery rhymes. Let’s just say, there’s a lot of meat in these little empanadas.
Nearly every poem is an amalgam of the poet’s experiences in the operating room, and the sometimes banal joys of say, oranges, exhaustion, and dads who flirt. But let Dr. Cozzi tell it.
From the poem, A Rapid Response, 4 AM:
On a scale of 1 to 10
how delicate is the darkness
icy the lighting
silent the daughter
tender the union
stranger the poetry
intimate the thought
ancient the blood
secret the language
patient the patient
awaiting dissolution
of nitroglycerin
under tongue?
Many people, including me in earlier years, claim to find all poetry — both classical and modern — either emotionally inaccessible, or simply incomprehensible. Neither is the case with these poems, nor are they merely dressed-up nursery rhymes. Let’s just say, there’s a lot of meat in these little empanadas.
Nearly every poem is an amalgam of the poet’s experiences in the operating room, and the sometimes banal joys of say, oranges, exhaustion, and dads who flirt. But let Dr. Cozzi tell it.
From the poem, A Rapid Response, 4 AM:
On a scale of 1 to 10
how delicate is the darkness
icy the lighting
silent the daughter
tender the union
stranger the poetry
intimate the thought
ancient the blood
secret the language
patient the patient
awaiting dissolution
of nitroglycerin
under tongue?
Displaying 1 of 1 review