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by David Watts, M. D. |
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Reviews of
Bedside Manners: |
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“Even the most routine checkup will never
be quite the same after you’ve read David Watts’s
Bedside Manners…. these quick, sharp vignettes focus on what is
going through the mind of the person who’s listening, literally and
figuratively, to our hearts while attempting to figure out what we’re really
trying to say about our physical and emotional pain….
Watt’s sympathy for both physicians and their patients subtly changes our
understanding of what it means to heal and be healed, and to put our trust
in the hands of a practitioner who is just as complex, flawed—and human—as
we are.”
--Francine Prose, O Magazine
Read Bedside Manners
by David Watts. In candid, poetic prose, a doctor explores the “instant,
profound human interaction” between patient and physicians. You’ll wish your
doctor were half as attentive.
--Newsweek
“Both empathetic and practical, Watts relates
encounters that have informed his ability to understand, diagnose and treat
sickness….All of the incidents related here, whether sad, frustrating or
inconclusive, are unfailingly compelling.”
--Publishers Weekly
The power of what (is said), and what is unsaid,
leaps from the page as Watts draws us into these anonymous sufferers' most
personal stories.
Watts' gift for sensing what is not said in their discussions of the
illnesses and deaths of themselves and their loved ones allows him to fill
the pages with penetrating images.
This book virtually defies classification. Is it poetry, medical nonfiction,
or some delightful combination of them?
--Donna Chavez,
Booklist
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Order
Bedside Manners
at
Amazon |
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by David Watts, M. D. |
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Reviews of
Taking the History: |
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These poems move easily between the
mysteries of the body and the mysteries of the poem. The poet's voice - be
it dark or light - is one the reader can trust implicitly.
With metaphors both skillful and provocative, David
Watts not only asks questions of the body, but in the making of these fine
poems, obtains some of the answers.
--John Stone, M.D., poet and cardiologist
These poems are compelling and compassionate.
--Maxine Kumin, poet
One of the core tasks of twentieth century poetry
has been the widening of poetic circumference: the bringing of new terrain
into a knowledge attainable only through the gate of awakened words.
Physician and poet David Watts fulfills this task impressively in Taking
the History.
Here both the meeting of healer and patient and the
meeting of technology and the mysteries of the body are deftly and
precisely awakened in poems of clarity, a properly humble wisdom, and
emotional range.
--Jane Hirshfield, poet
David Watts has the eye, ear and heart of a poet
and, just as importantly for this book, the poetic subject that
allows him to use his considerable powers to their fullest - the human
body with all its frailty and strength - as a metaphor for our existence.
With linguistic precision for image and phrase that
recalls William Carlos Williams -"Plum blossoms on the ground /
like frost flakes. And my friend lies still / in the ICU..." -
David Watts convinces the reader that "the body needs a washing
out" and that "the heart can harm itself,"
leaving us with the recognition that our body is the world and the world
is our body.
I love these poems for presenting the horrifying
fragility of our existence and the incredible resilience and strength with
which we meet our individual fates.
--Len Roberts, poet
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Order
Taking the History
Book |
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Order
Taking the History Tape |
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The Taking the
History audio cassette contains a selection of eleven poems
read by David Watts, including "The Girl in the Painting by
Vermeer," which aired on National Public Radio's All Things
Considered. |
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by David Watts, M. D. |
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Reviews of
Making: |
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David Watts explores the many meanings and
suggestions of making: love, poetry, the deepening of love through grief,
and the intense drama of making a child.
These taut, ripe poems are bright with compassion,
insight, and discovery of what it takes to be a man as the new millennium
takes hold.
--Edward Kleinschmidt Mayes
See Joan's companion chapbook Blackberry
Winter. |
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Order
Making Chapbook |
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About David: |
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David Watts was trained first as a musician, then as a
doctor. He is a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All
Things Considered and holds a number of national media awards.
His books of poetry include Taking The
History, Making,
and Slow Waking at Jenner-by-the-Sea.
He is an educator at the University of California at San Francisco
(UCSF) and elsewhere.
Harvey Ellis is a pseudonym for the midnight voice.
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Read David's
full bio |
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