Blood and Hyacinths: The Human Condition in Poetry

“Browsing the Journal of Gastrointestinal Distress” might seem an odd title for a poem, but not one written to honor the acclaimed Serbian American poet Charles Simic, who died in January 2023. Simic’s poetry was colored by his early years in then-Yugoslavia amidst the specter of bloody politi cal oppression, and was also distinctly American in its belief that art could be liberating. Thus “Browsing” tells of hyacinths planted among lyrically inscribed gravestones, the first in a series of juxtapositions that suggest beauty amidst darkness. Similarly, the speaker’s fascination with the strange loveliness of the bowel’s vast blood supply contrasts with the bloodlust of spectators at an unspecified public execution. The change in diction in the third stanza, with its slowing-down use of the passive voice, marks a shift from lofty musings to gritty reality check, as the speaker ironically recognizes the troubling bind of our existence. Aren’t the “children pressed to beg no more//no more” also among the “bright faces,//flecked with sugar and crumbs,” “begging, more, more” as the axe is wiped clean? Whether we innocently (or even nobly) study medicine to cure disease, or seek lurid entertainment in capital punishment, the poem implies we are all complicit in the suffering around us. “Blood plots a route and runs, hyacinths bloom,” the poem concludes ominously and brilliantly, reminding us that from all our wondrous internal complexity, and despite ...
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research