Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN

User menu

Search

  • Advanced search
CMAJ
  • CMAJ JOURNALS
    • CMAJ Open
    • CJS
    • JAMC
    • JPN
CMAJ

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Articles & podcasts
    • Blog posts
    • Collection
    • News
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Early releases
    • Collections
    • Sections
    • Blog
    • Infographics & illustrations
    • Podcasts
    • Classified ads
  • Authors
    • Overview for authors
    • Submission guidelines
    • Submit a manuscript
    • Forms
    • Editorial process
    • Editorial policies
    • Peer review process
    • Publication fees
    • Reprint requests
  • CMA Members
    • Overview for members
    • Earn CPD Credits
    • Print copies of CMAJ
    • Career Ad Discount
  • Subscribers
    • General information
    • View prices
  • Alerts
    • Email alerts
    • RSS
  • JAMC
    • À propos
    • Numéro en cours
    • Archives
    • Sections
    • Abonnement
    • Alertes
  • Visit CMAJ on Facebook
  • Follow CMAJ on Twitter
  • Follow CMAJ on Pinterest
  • Follow CMAJ on Youtube
  • Follow CMAJ on Instagram
Humanities

The sound of poetry

Mark Frutkin
CMAJ November 09, 2010 182 (16) 1769; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.101176
Mark Frutkin
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Silent Music

Richard Bronson

Padishah Press; 2009.

If this collection of poems is any indication, it’s clear that Richard Bronson can find music anywhere. In the title poem, “Silent Music,” he enters his mother’s apartment and hears, ticking from the radiators, the “anguished chord” that opens the third act of Trìstan und Isolde. Now that’s a musician’s ear.

Bronson, a physician at the Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island in New York State, is unquestionably an accomplished poet; he was the 2003 recipient of the Poem of the Year award of the American College of Physicians. He has followed up his first collection of poems, Search for Oz, with a second volume that explores his life and his world with ears wide open.

The first section of Silent Music focuses on Bronson’s childhood, youth and family. These poems avoid the sentimentality that one sometimes finds in such subjects. Instead, he gives the reader a taste of the joy and ebullience of youth —“I hotfooted on sun-baked sand, /ran off toward the water’s edge/yelling ‘Goolop, dee goolop!’” (“My Uncle Jerry”) — or shows us what it’s like to “plunge/toward the fast approaching light/at the end of the tunnel” on a wooden roller coaster (“The Mouth of the Dragon”).

Music, in all its forms, is a consistent theme throughout these poems, including references to Wagner, Brahms and other composers; the A, E and C notes on a triad of wine goblets; and his father’s violin, which he finds abandoned in an attic and asks “Can you sing me a song/of my lost father”(www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.081575). In “The Dinner Party,” a particularly touching poem about loss and absence, he says his mother “would understand/the need for the minor chord.”

Figure1
  • Download figure
  • Open in new tab
  • Download powerpoint

Image courtesy of Padishah Press

The second section contains nine poems of travel and far off places, and takes us on journeys to Ecuador, Japan, Tewkesbury Abbey in England and Italy. These poems prove less engaging than those in the first section, although the author does successfully contrast the eternal faith of the long-ago monks of Tewkesbury with his own “age of doubt.”

In the third section, Bronson touches, in several poems, on his life as a doctor, sometimes wondering which head he will wear that day, the head of the poet or healer? In “Massacre of the Innocents,” he mourns the destruction of three-thousand orphaned embryos, their little lives ending in “a whisper/of nitrogen vapor.” In a number of these poems, however, he resorts too often to mythological references that distance the reader from the everyday intrigue of his profession.

In the last section, Bronson reveals his political side. He questions the wisdom in governments granting themselves emergency powers, ponders “the American way” after Abu Ghraib, and wonders why so much destruction has been deployed “in our name.” The strongest poem in this section is the Rumi-like lyric, “The Man Who Raised Nightingales,” a sad and lovely meditation on how a world of tender passion and gentle music is too often drowned out by the shriek of violence: “And the Wazir of the West/danced to the chant, in his very pointed shoes, /played duet on his oud, /cried ‘Wallazoon, Aa’arooon!”

Altogether, Silent Music offers a good, though uneven, selection of poems. This reader longed for more exploration of the intersection between medicine and poetry, between healing and music (as well as silence). Perhaps a future volume will pry open this fertile territory.

Footnotes

  • Previously published at www.cmaj.ca

    Mark Frutkin has published 11 books. His latest novel, Fabrizio’s Return (2006), won the Trillium Award for best book in Ontario and the Sunburst Award.

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 182 (16)
CMAJ
Vol. 182, Issue 16
9 Nov 2010
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author

Article tools

Respond to this article
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
To sign up for email alerts or to access your current email alerts, enter your email address below:
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on CMAJ.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The sound of poetry
(Your Name) has sent you a message from CMAJ
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the CMAJ web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
The sound of poetry
Mark Frutkin
CMAJ Nov 2010, 182 (16) 1769; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.101176

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
‍ Request Permissions
Share
The sound of poetry
Mark Frutkin
CMAJ Nov 2010, 182 (16) 1769; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.101176
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Footnotes
  • Figures & Tables
  • Responses
  • Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • No related articles found.
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Dear Grandma
  • The butterfly
  • Are we going to talk about it?
Show more Humanities

Similar Articles

Content

  • Current issue
  • Past issues
  • Collections
  • Sections
  • Blog
  • Podcasts
  • Alerts
  • RSS
  • Early releases

Information for

  • Advertisers
  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • CMA Members
  • Media
  • Reprint requests
  • Subscribers

About

  • General Information
  • Journal staff
  • Editorial Board
  • Governance Council
  • Journal Oversight
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright and Permissions

Copyright 2021, Joule Inc. or its licensors. All rights reserved. ISSN 1488-2329 (e) 0820-3946 (p)

All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association or its subsidiaries.

Powered by HighWire