Synopsis "Better Living Through Poetry: A Lyrical Autobiography (in English)"
I have lived my life through poetry from the time I was 13 years old, reading Emerson and Shakespeare after school, to the present when I am now 71. This book presents poems I wrote that reflect on the meaning and purpose of my life, starting when I was a callow youth and continuing up to the present moment. It is thus a true autobiography of one man's journey through life as realized through poetry. But it is not a look backward like some autobiographies that are written at the end of life. It is more like a journal of entries written in the moment looking forward from youth to old age. The first part (age 13 to 31) covers my early meditations on life, death, youth, vocation and career. The second part (age 31 to 45) describes my search for love and how I found it in marriage. It also celebrates some of the many friendships that have enriched my life. The poetic narrative then goes rather silent from age 45 to 60 when I was busy writing the professional articles and books that defined my career. The third part (age 60 to 71) deals with the challenges of growing older. The last part of the autobiography has not been written yet because I am still alive. The book presents a lyrical narrative of human development as Erik Erikson might have described it, moving from one stage to the next from childhood to old age. For that reason, much of the material in these poems is intensely personal. I did not reveal them as I was pursuing my medical and academic career. Indeed, even my parents and siblings never saw these poems until recently. I feared that the culture that I lived in from 1965 to 2015 was not supportive of this kind of humanism. Maybe I was wrong. When I received a national award for humanism in medicine from my professional colleagues in 2017, the audience seemed to enjoy my poems. My purpose in sharing these poems now is to encourage young people to reflect about life, talk about it and perhaps write their own lyrical autobiography. The poems in this collection deal with life, death, youth, sex, vocation, work, career, love, marriage, friendship and aging well. What more is there?
