difficult news
by Valerie Berry
“Seeing what no one else has ever seen is part of the healing task for doctor and poet, and Valerie Berry’s eyes, heart, and words are skilled practitioners. Poems from her life in medicine refuse the temptation of medicine's easy drama and lead us instead to gratitude and respect for the rigorous possibilities in these humane arts. Whether responding to a question from Rumi, a line from Neruda, or learning from Rodin’s fallen caryatids, Berry makes honest poems. . . . Variety, compassion, clarity of voice and vision mark this compelling first collection of sensitive responses to difficult and beautiful news, poems that help us appreciate our lives as we go on learning how to live them.”
— Jeanne Lohmann, author of Granite Under Water and Flying Horses
VALERIE BERRY is a physician practicing community medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. The images and themes in her poems are informed by her delight in the natural world, to which she brings an eye trained in clinical observation.
Her chapbook, this is how you learn what is enough, was published in a limited letterpress edition by Protean Press in 1994. difficult news is her first full-length book of poems.
the fallen caryatids: Rodin
Close to Orpheus, their backs
to the Gates of Hell, they balance
their burdens in a slow,
bronze falling.
Supple as trees these women
fold into themselves, assuming
the unborn shape left long ago
for the difficult work
of their straightening.
Now weight breaks the symmetry
of shoulders in
graceful collapse.
One carries water; one
bears a stone. Each holds
a hand to steady the thing
that crushes her.
Each turns her face away from that hand.
On the planes of their cheeks
light lies smeared like fine oil,
lips press against wrists
as if tasting the gleam—
what flesh knows of its
own endurance, shining
like a blade.
first lesson
In April we walk—you ask me
the names of things. I say bay
laurel, Umbellularia californica,
also know as pepperwood. But
nothing happens until I crack
the spine of a slender leaf, hold it
to your nose. Suddenly, your face
is full of tree light, saying the
name, over and over.
