DOI: 10.1097/01.COT.0000298594.38664.6d

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Issn Print: 0276-2234

Publication Date: 2007/10/25


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Frank Meyskens' New Poetry Book Explores Breadth of Human Condition, How Illness Affects Patients, Doctors and Nurses, & Family Members

Peggy Eastman

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Excerpt

Frank L. Meyskens, Jr., MD, began to write poetry in his third year of medical school—“probably to alleviate the enormous emotional toll exacted by one's first patient encounters,” as he put it.
He never deliberately set out to become a poet, he says, but a collection of his poems, Aching for Tomorrow, has now been published (Nov. 12 is the official publication date) by Fithian Press.
Today, Dr. Meyskens holds the Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr. Endowed Chair and is Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He is also Director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Vice Chancellor in the College of Health Sciences.
In a wide-ranging telephone interview, Dr. Meyskens shared his philosophy of writing. “People will want to know why I wrote this book,” he said. “Poetry doesn't pay the bills, but there's more to life than writing bills. A civilization without art is a civilization without a soul.”
Dr. Meyskens, whose poetry has appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology as well as in this newspaper—indeed, it was his idea to include poetry as a regular feature in OT, for which he is a member of the Editorial Board—added, “This is an avocation, not a vocation….poetry is very intimate.”
He praised the humanizing trend toward adding at least a few literature or art courses in medical schools. “I think we need a lot more of this in medicine,” he said, adding that maintaining a detached clinical manner with ill and suffering patients “is probably the most difficult part of medicine.”
Dr. Meyskens said that when he was in medical school and being trained, “it was survival of the fittest,” and the emotional toll medicine took on its practitioners was not addressed.
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