The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Book Review

Bill
by Bill Rector.
Proem Press, Denver and Los Angeles, 2006.
Paper $12.00.
Reviewed by Howard Spiro (howard.spiro@yale.edu).

William G. Rector, Jr., M.D. is a gastroenterologist whose attention ranges far from the orifice that gives so much to that field, as you will discover in looking into this imaginative collection of his poetry. Plainly labelled Bill, the front cover of his paperback book displays a right hand raised more for blessing than for probing, just right for his down-to-earth musings on his experiences, both medical and "otherwise."

Stanzas of free verse and paragraphs of emotion condensed by the strictures of poetry, are sometimes easily translated and at other times fulfill the poetic mission to arouse emotion hard to trace but always uplifting. His description of elderly next-door neighbors is wrenching in its implications, for the older readers.

One poem cautions “Don’t ask so much of your poems.” His poetry talks of ordinary people, whose medical experiences remind the reader of similar travails. But Rector’s imagination lifts them far from the surface. In “before the colonoscopy” the tattoo of a marijuana plant on the buttock of a young woman sends him into a reverie about her early youth and the “other men privileged to have discovered a bright remnant of the Garden in your underwear.” After he finished the procedure, I imagine.

Dr. Rector’s imagination is thrilling: he comments how the names of the newer antidepressants could be equally given to “Japanese cars” in contrast to the older drugs that boasted their value in names like Librium or Valium.

Bill brings empathy and sympathy to all that he sees. Dr. Rector is blessed in his skill, which brings new observations about medical practice to us transmuted, thoughtful and full of vigor.

Read this poetry!

Published: March 21, 2007