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Heal, Body, Heal: Invocations
to Hope and Health
By Rochelle Ratner
1. Working with Convalescents
- Burke Rehabilitation Center
An island is an
oasis
An oasis in the desert
Burke is one of the finest places I've heard of
Burke is a temple realizing the original Burke's concept
toward humanity
A Viennese father figure set somewhere in the woods of Salzburg
Burke is like a big plate of chicken soup with matzoh balls
We have a patient on our floor who's always dreaming of
cream cheese and bagels
My children come to see me almost every day
They find it very calm, a soothing motel after a long
day of hard driving
A sanctuary that takes people from the outside world and
prepares them to go back into it
Burke is like my electric wheelchair-it gets me all over.
- Group Poem
We pushed two round tables together
in the small second floor library. The recreation therapists went
off to help bring in the participants, most of whom were in wheelchairs
and needed assistance. I sat at the table and felt sort of helpless.
I was used to working with people of this age in senior centers,
but I sensed that these people were different. In a senior center
I've heard women complain that they find it difficult to walk far;
the woman I now saw pulling up close to the table did not have to
complain, it was obvious that she needed help getting out of her
wheelchair. I understood that we were going to be dealing here with
feelings that were still raw. Most of the participants had never
written before and were not accustomed to using literary form as
a mask for what they found difficult to say directly. I recognized
that these workshops would play a crucial part in the lives that
some of the participants would lead from here on.
At this first session there was
one participant, Jeff, who seemed barely able to move, let alone
write. When we passed out paper, I simply worked around him. Then
one of the recreation therapists saw him scribbling at a piece of
tape on the arm of his chair and shoved paper in front of him. He
wrote something like "I am Jeff," and even this was received with
encouragement. The patients and staff were teaching me the way things
were done at Burke. I tried several different writing ideas and
over the various workshops developed four lessons which seemed to
follow a definite progression yet were basic enough for new participants
at any session to follow. During the first series of workshops,
I spent the fourth session focusing on "prayers." We spoke of prayer
as a form of direct address, an asking, which could be directed
at anyone. We discussed the difference between "prayer" and "blessing."
Yet most of the poems dealt with sickness, the need to be healed.
They asked for healing.
I should have known. In the
month since I had begun teaching there, I had found my own poems
moving toward a definition of sickness and health. These workshops
would be of value only if they could help the participants come
to terms with their illness and the health that still remained.
I began to see growth in people from week to week. At the third
session we had confronted illness directly in "talking to a part
of the body"; at the fourth and final session, one of the women
picked up on that theme and described what the experience of attending
these workshops had meant for all of us:
Heal, Body, Heal
What have I done to you to justify
what you
have done to me, all unknowingly?
Tell me, can you heal as well as destroy? If so, how?
If so, tell me-I shall do as you say.
- Florence O'Brien
2. The Workshops
The workshops would begin around
7:30 in the evening, but we seldom started writing before 8:00.
I made sure that paper and pencils were available, but they were
not passed out until it came time to write. I stressed that no one
had to write if he or she did not want to; they were welcome to
join in anyway and listen or participate in the conversation. And
many participants did just that. Others, who insisted they couldn't
write, would begin to scribble once they saw other people working.
Some patients would get visitors and leave in the middle of the
session; other times the visitors joined in; other patients got
tired and decided to leave. We tried to keep things as loose and
relaxed as possible. In general, the workshops were over by 9:00,
though sometimes conversations continued.
At the first workshop we went around
the table and introduced ourselves. Going around again, I asked
each person to "tap out the rhythm of your first name on the table,
emphasizing the number of syllables, which syllable is accented,
whether the rhythm is slow or fast." If there was a patient who
did not seem able to move his or her arms, I adapted the exercise
by asking everyone either to tap out the rhythm or hum it. Someone
challenged me: "What does all this have to do with writing?" The
answer came before I could fully think it out: "Poetry is rhythm,
and concentrating on our names, the most personal part of ourselves,
is directly related to what the poem should do." I read some poems
in which poets had dealt with the meaning and sound of their names.
We talked about the importance
of names in the Old Testament. In Genesis 17, for example, God says:
"No longer shall your name be Abram [that is, exalted father],
but your name shall henceforth be Abraham [father of a multitude],
for I have made you father of a multitude of nations." Or, in Genesis
25, Rebekah is described giving birth to twins: "Afterward his brother
came forth, and his hand had taken hold of Esau's heel; so his name
was called Jacob [that is, He takes by the heel or He supplants].
We discussed superstitions and
religious traditions regarding naming, such as the Jewish belief
that the soul of a dead person does not come to rest until its name
has been given to an infant, or the custom of changing the name
of a sick child: thus was the Angel of Death confused when he came
for Jacob and found Seth. I brought in a dictionary of names and
read the meaning of each person's name. This, in itself, was instrumental
in sparking off images for some participants:
Matthew
What God gave him.
God gave me a good life. In all my
troubles he was there to help me. Even
in my trouble now: I am an old man
and he helped me to recuperate fast from
my heart operation
- Matthew Kaftan
* * * * *
Barbara-the stranger
Strange to me or strange to others?
Am I strange to myself?
Do I know me?
What is my rhythm
Or do I mean my bio-rhythm?
Does he know me-the stranger?
Does he understand the stranger in me?
I have often wondered to myself
Do I know me-do you know me?
Are we strangers to each other?
Are we now less strange as the years flow by?
Has life brought us closer?
I wonder-more and more as I think of us-
of you, of me.
- Barbara Willig
For other participants, thinking
of their names sparked off child- hood memories. Billie, who wrote
the following poem, mentioned that she had not thought about her
lost name since she was a young child.
Libby, they say she called me,
Libelleh, my Mom. I don't remember ever being
called Libelleh, you see I was only two
and she had already left us.
She was thirty four and her name was Sara.
No one ever called me Libelleh after
she was gone.
Now I am "Billie"-I sure
would like to hear the name Libelleh.
Now I am Billie, full grown, and
never to hear the name Libelleh again.
I came away from that first workshop
with a feeling that I had succeeded in giving each person his or
her own name back. And along with that went the strong affirmation
of individuality: many people were looking at themselves as if for
the first time.
Barbara Willig, who'd written
the "stranger" poem earlier that evening, was able to take the theme
of "name as identity" one step further. This time she was able to
make the name into an image:
Super giant-I was always big.
At least I always felt so big:
Big hands, big feet,
I always envied my little friends.
It was not until I grew up a bit
I could stand tall and not feel so big.
I learned words like regal and Junoesque.
They made me feel more desirable.
They gave me a new self image.
I was no longer a super-giant,
Perhaps only a giant-but a nice one.
"Super Giant" was actually
the name of a flower. Over the summer, I'd been glancing at a Burpee
Seed Catalogue and was fascinated by some of the names for different
flowers. Without telling people what the flower was, I read some
of the names: Summer Sun, Plum Pudding, Majorette, Christmas Pepper,
Blue Fairy Tale, Organ Pipe, Native's Comb. I asked them to write
about the flower, what it looked like, how it got its name, or whatever
else one of the names called to mind. We talked about how people
in a hospital are always receiving gifts of flowers and discussed
ways they could relate the names to themselves.
Barbara's two poems had revealed
an openness about herself which interested me. I was anxious to
find out more about her and wheeled her back to her room that night
so we would have a chance to talk. She told me she had always promised
herself that she would someday find the time to write, but had continually
put it off. I pointed out that she had the time now. During the
next three sessions I was continually encouraging her to try some
writing on her own during the day, but she kept insisting she didn't
feel well enough, she wanted to be at home before she really started
writing on her own. After leaving Burke, Barbara joined a writing
workshop at a senior center near her home.
At the second session, I wanted
to give participants a form that would allow them to write about
their concerns without being "personal. " The key seemed to be in
the use of images. I asked each of them to "write about yourself
as if you were an animal or an object. " I took care to make sure
that the examples I read had a happy, playful feeling, such as David
Ignatow's "The Bagel."
Whatever animal or object they
chose to be, I wanted them actually to become it. "If you're a floor,
is it because people walk all over you? What does it feel like?
Are you wood, linoleum, or is there a carpet over you? Do children
run barefoot across you.
We spoke of how poetry permits
you to become any animal or object you want to be, simply
by imagining yourself as that. No one could criticize your fantasies.
And yet my reaction to Max Kornweitz's poem was to want to cry out,
"You've got more than this!" He had seemed calm and quiet. The poem
shows his acceptance of illness as just one more thing he was fated
to endure:
I think of myself as a small horse,
Hard-working, always sleepy,
Who looks like he's carrying all the hardship
of life on his back
And never gets a break to enjoy a better life,
Who is always tired, and looks for a place to relax.
I sensed that Charlotte Stern
had begun writing her poem from much the same point of view that
we saw in Max's poem. The first two lines lead us to believe she
will go on to talk about things that happened to her which she would
have liked to forget. But perhaps writing those lines acted as a
catharsis for her-she saw them written there and realized that no,
she didn't want to forget, she just wanted to remember the happier
times:
I am an elephant.
I wish I could not have a memory, and forget.
However it has sometimes been a good point
Because I don't forget nice things I experienced.
So I try to concentrate on positive things
To make life easier for me and those around me.
Charlotte understood that during
this period of illness she would need people around to help her
and care for her; Doris Silverstein took that one step further.
Her poem is ambivalent: she sees friends and the care they offer
as a threat as well as a comfort. Like Max Kornweitz, she was coming
to an acceptance of her life. Illness was forcing her to look at
everything around her in much more personal terms; she watched the
flowers wilt in her room and realized it would be possible for her
to wilt as well. As she watched the flowers struggling to survive,
the struggle her own body was going through became that much clearer
to her.
I feel like a bunch of flowers.
I like being flowers and yet I am afraid
Of all the people who will come and pick me-
Petal by petal.
I want to stay whole and yet I know that someone,
Many people, will want to take part of me with them.
My petals are getting less and less.
The water that is nurturing me is evaporating
I would like at this moment to be in a florist's case-
Cool, well cared for-
And to stay fresh and lovely and alive for longer
Than is possible for a flower's lifetime.
There were other people who already
had a strong sense of who they were, and for them the use of images
seemed too much of a bother. Anna Weintraub wanted to be precisely
what she was, and her poem is a beautiful affirmation of that. It
becomes almost an ode to the recuperative powers of the body:
I am 82
Still going strong
Broke my hip
Still going strong
Had it mended
And still going strong
You can't keep a woman like me down.
Anna's poem led us directly into
the third session: an affirmation that the body can recuperate.
I had found that people seemed to ignore the injured parts of their
bodies, rather than really work on them. I told them that "the body
can recuperate, but you have to tell it what you want. People talk
to plants, and we're told they grow better. Why shouldn't the body,
or one part of the body, react the same way?"
The workshop happened to coincide
with Valentine's Day, so naturally discussion centered on the heart.
Some pointed out that the physical therapist was constantly reminding
her that "the heart is a muscle" and must be used to produce movement.
We wrote the following group poem, passing around a sheet of paper
with each person writing, then folding it over so the next person
couldn't see what had already been written:
The Heart
The heart is a muscle
The heart has become a geographical designation:
Heart of the nation, tobacco country, etc.
The heart beats and is measured by machines
But not when we use the word to mean "feelings"
The heart is a pump sending blood through our veins
The heart reflects the glory of the sun
Hearts made of chocolate and other goodies
Hearts made of muscle and blood
Chocolate hearts are good to eat
Muscle and blood hearts are hard to treat
The heart is the symbol of love and
The maintainer of life
The heart beats the rhythm of living and loving
The heart is a very delicate organ, so please do not
break mine.
This poem has a marked tendency
toward cliche and abstraction. I saw that writing about a part of
the body could easily lead to sentimentality, which was one of the
reasons I wanted people to address the body. I told them
to "be as specific as possible. Don't try to talk to your entire
body, but choose one part, and tell it precisely what you want from
it. If you can give the reader a clear picture of that one part,
he will have no trouble imagining the rest of your body. It's like
a moment caught in a snapshot." We made a few small mirrors available,
in case they wanted to write about a part of the body they couldn't
see otherwise, but no one bothered to use them. Perhaps they were
all too aware of their physical conditions; they wanted to use the
poem to lift them above everyday reality:
My forehead is wrinkled.
I would like it to be smooth.
Someday I will plant
something there. . . (anonymous)
It took me a long time to find
a poem I could use as an example which would force participants
into a direct encounter with their bodies and handicaps, yet at
the same time would not present a completely negative focus. The
poem I finally selected is by Robert Winner, himself a paraplegic:
To My Face, after Illness
From your bones on out
you give the lie to suffering.
You ought to be more lined with pain.
You should give a stronger impression
in photographs
of the heartbreak caged in your fat.
Mess of tissues!
Maybe I should be grateful to you
for remembering,
for leaving printed on this flesh-
its sun-tanned jowls-
these inescapable paragraphs
which tell the original story.
After hearing this, David Gordon
dictated to me the following poem:
My left hand and arm,
like a lover,
always beside me,
always to help me-
you burn me up
because my right
is not as strong as my left.
But then the one time you disappoint me
and become numb to my flesh,
I don't even know you're there.
Then I look down
and I expect to see
a bare stomach
but instead I see you.
It comes to mind
how I have no fury
like a woman scorned.
The swan has turned into an ugly duckling
for what once was really beautiful
to me
has become an appendage,
like a lobster claw:
red, raw, and mean-looking,
with no help
but just ugliness.
To see and to feel
and not to see and not to feel. . .
a paradox.
To think I always took care of you,
but when I really needed you
you were never there,
and you never took care of me.
David insisted he'd never written
before, yet everything he dictated, and the speed at which he was
able to progress from image to image, belied that assertion. While
writing this, he had trouble remembering the word "paradox," and
made me look in two dictionaries and a thesaurus in order to find
it.
David himself was a paradox; nothing
else he said gave any hint of the anger he expressed in this poem.
He contributed a lot to every conversation and showed an interest
in everyone who spoke. I remember one night the recreation therapists
were discussing a trip with patients to a local movie theater, and
he mentioned that he would not want to go with them: "People around
here know me, and I'd rather they didn't see me yet."
Kathleen Cudney, like David, was
angry at her body. She had every right to be. She was in her early
twenties; arthritis was slowly crippling her completely. (The younger
patients were in a different unit of the hospital, and many of their
activities were separated from those of the older patients, but
I wanted the workshops open to everyone and found it easier to relate
at first to the two patients closer to my own age.) At the first
session, Kathleen seemed to be sullen, but as the sessions progressed
she gradually opened up. The first poem she wrote she refused to
share with the group. I read it and immediately perceived that she
had written before. The hospital staff told me there were anxious
to find activities that could interest her now that her physical
capacity was more limited, and writing seemed an important step
in developing other interests.
At the third session she brought
in some of her old poems, many of which she was now revising. During
this workshop she wrote an angry poem to her body, and she read
it. David's poem had already been read, and perhaps that influenced
her. But she heard other participants read more encouraging poems,
thanking injured parts of their bodies for the good times they had
shared and promising that those times would come again. While we
were sitting around talking, after reading the poems, she began
to write again, rewriting the same poem with an entirely different
emphasis.
1.
My right hand
serves me no more-
now to write
I must use both.
Time consuming.
My legs serve me poorly
or not at all;
muscle strength
is gone.
My head
serves me no more-
Jumbled thoughts,
mixed-up feelings,
confusion.
2.
Right hand
why do you fail me?
I always took good care
of you,
kept you as warm
as I could in winter,
even if
I had to sit on you.
Sorry if it hurt,
but it hurt more
when you were cold.
At least I tried.
Why don't you
try harder?
You can do it,
I know you can,
so let's keep going, trying,
together.
In the first poem, Kathleen dealt
with three separate parts of her body: her right hand, her legs,
and her head. The second poem proved that, with a little effort,
she did have the ability to concentrate and focus on only one part,
as if at the same time she was heal-ing the "jumbled thoughts" of
the first poem.
Kristin Maher was a lot like Kathi.
She was also an arthritic patient, and she was younger than most
of the others-I'd say probably in her mid- to late thirties. She
was able to begin writing at each session without any prompting;
aside from reading her work she was fairly quiet. But here the resemblances
stopped. Everything she wrote was from a very positive point of
view, and her poems usually focused more on other people than herself.
In speaking to her body, she dealt with the part that she felt put
her in the closest touch with others.
Ears,
Thank you for bringing me music
Which, depending on which type,
Brings peace or a livelier gaiety.
And ears, through you come
Voices of friends or birds,
My cats,
Kind people, brusque voices
And then music
Which closes the circle of love.
Kristin's poem started me thinking.
It now struck me that when you talk to someone this directly, you
expect an answer. What would happen if we took the theme of sickness
and health and started to look at it as a dialogue between the body
and the mind? "If we can talk this directly to a part of the body,
it's only right for it to be able to give its version." When I first
suggested that people now write an answer to their first poem, I
was expecting something more or less humorous. Yet the only people
who wrote humorous answers were the two recreation therapists and
myself. Kristin's second poem is remarkable in its ability to endow
her ears with as much kindness for "her" as she originally felt
for "them"
Yes, we heard you.
What we have given
Is safely in storage,
So that even if we stopped hearing
You wouldn't.
The music will still be there
Even when we and the rest of you
Aren't.
Later, when I typed Kristin's
poem, I realized that she used these words to assuage her fear of
death. And certainly death was an imminent presence for all the
people in these workshops. Yet I kept pushing it from my mind. The
prospect of my own death was something I did not want to face, and
I felt it was necessary to continue the workshops as if others had
not faced it either. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that
no one would destroy my illusions. Everyone listened politely to
my suggestions for assignments, then they went ahead and wrote the
poems they felt they had to write. In having a part of the body
"answer" the poem addressed to it, they had turned an exercise I
had seen as playful into a profoundly significant dialogue. Not
one poem consciously fought the assignment I had given; the participants
simply added their own content to the form I provided.
There were similar results with
an exercise triggered by Denise Levertov's marvelous poem, "The
Wings," where she imagines two wings-one black, one white-growing
between her shoulder blades.
I thought it would be interesting
if people could "invent a new part of their bodies." We talked about
science fiction and the way it makes use of this device. If we were
to invent a new part, then it would most likely be a natural extension
of the parts we already have. And certainly we had a lot of fun
talking about the possibilities. But the poems were once again down
to earth and practical. Several people, many of whom were stroke
patients, wrote about inventing new brains.
I would like to invent a brain
That healthily lasts 80 years
and then immediately stops with no pain.
This would alleviate much
unnecessary suffering and heartbreak.
White as an angel
And just as trusting
- Mr. S.
When he wrote this poem, Mr. S.
was an active participant in all the workshops. He was able to get
around without much trouble, but as constantly complaining that
his mind would not let him pronounce the word he wanted. He seemed
to be continually reaching for something and then giving up. When
my eyes caught his for a moment, I had the feeling that he knew
something I didn't know. It didn't matter that outwardly he seemed
to be getting better, inwardly he was dying, and he knew it. When
I came back to Burke for another series of workshops, two or three
months later, he had returned as a patient. He did not come to the
workshops this time. The recreation therapists told me they were
no longer able to get him to participate in anything, and after
a few weeks he was transferred to a nursing home.
It was out in the open now; we
talked about the fact that he was dying. Once I accepted that, the
poem he had written about "inventing a new part of the body" took
on deeper meaning. And looking again over the poems he wrote, I
found another one-written earlier that same evening-which captures
that same sense of finality. He was not able to focus on any one
part of his body, and he was not able to talk to it either. He stated
simply what he felt; actuality became a dream of the future without
his being aware of it:
What have I done to my body?
Abused it,
Amused it,
Busted it many times.
This is a never-ending game.
And then the ball game is over
It stops abruptly,
And peace will be eternal.
In the first three sessions, I
had guided the participants through an assertion of individuality,
the transferring of their feelings onto an object, and a direct
encounter with their illness. Now I wanted them to write a healing
poem, and I read some primitive healing poems as examples.
People seemed confused by the
poems. I stopped and just asked them directly: "If I told you to
write a healing poem, what would you think of?" Talk led to prayer,
to doctors, operations, and the simple kindness of nurses. We even
somehow got talking about levitation. We spoke of the psychological
elements involved in the heal-ing process, how the "laying-on of
hands" could be related to the touch of any doctor. We talked about
exorcism, where the sickness is ordered out of the body and into
some object or animal. I related this to the Old Testament understanding
of the scapegoat. I said that people unable to understand what an
illness actually is frequently personified it and prayed to it,
such as prayers to "Verminus" for the relief from worms. One poem
by a contemporary American poet, Rose Drachler, seemed to illustrate
my point perfectly-and it was a poem they had no trouble understanding.
Amulet Against Cancer
Big Black dog
who lives away from masters
I growl back at you
Wild dog with no master
I advance slowly
One step at a time
I hit you between the ears
On top of the head
With a wooden spoon
I spit in your face
Then feed you
You must learn to live in my house
In a corner. You must learn
How to live in my house
With me
Florence O'Brien's poem, "Heal,
Body, Heal" was written at this session.
Not every participant was able
to write, or even talk, directly from their feelings. Sometimes,
an exalted sense of poetic language got in the way, as in this poem:
Heal, heal, oh heal
You vast and shapeless depths
Of universal night-
You starry nebulae-
And O, you infinitely small,
You corpuscles of nerve and blood,
You atoms of uranium,
Mercury and sulphur,
And O, you in-between,
You powers of man
By this incantation
Heal, heal, Oh heal!
-Mr. D.
Mr. D. was a stroke patient, and
at the previous sessions was wheeled in on a stretcher. It was hard
for him to see other people and thus get the general mood of the
group, so he would talk on endlessly and expect others to listen.
At the second session, when we wrote about being an object or an
animal, he began with: "It would be nice to be God." This healing
poem, for all its faults, was the first poem he had written rather
than dictated. He was sitting at the table; for the first time he
was joining the group.
When I look back on these workshops,
Socrates Vavoudis is one of the people I think about with affection.
His father was a Greek poet. In his late fifties, Socrates was still
working as a computer engineer, but he had taken writing courses
in college and had grown up with literature, I met him standing
outside the library door before the second session, and we started
talking. There was a calmness and certainty in his presence that
made me think he was one of the staff. No, he had had heart surgery.
At the workshop sessions he began
writing immediately, but at the final session he was having trouble.
At one point I whispered: "If you're stuck, try starting with nonsense
syllables and see where that leads you." Though he didn't take my
advice, he began writing just after that. He was the last person
in the room to begin, but he finished ahead of most of the others.
As soon as he finished writing,
he got up and walked around the room for a few minutes. He stepped
out into the hall, came back to the table. We were going around
the table and reading our poems and came to where he was sitting.
He asked us to continue reading and come back to his poem later.
He said he was feeling pain. He told us the assignment had upset
him by forcing him to focus on his sickness. When he first came
back into the room his hand had been lightly resting on his chest,
a gesture common to those with a heart condition. The next poem
we heard had an incantational quality to it, and Socrates commented
on how soothing our voices were. He sat down, relaxed now. Though
I had used this "healing poem" assignment with other groups, this
was the first time that everyone seemed to take the word "healing"
as synonymous with "comfort." Socrates' poem expresses that most
directly, and he was feeling well enough to read it now:
Healing Senses
Take me oh mother of my senses
and warm me and soothe me.
Absorb all the pain bolts
which must run their course.
Leave me limp with comfort and sleep
to rest in a void of blank security
and warmth.
Let me stay in this posture
at least till I've healed
without new wounds and lightning
bolts of shrieking pain,
and warm me and soothe me.
*originally appeared
in Teachers & Writers Magazine, 1983, and The Uses
of Reminiscence, The Haworth Press, 1984
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