In this text, poet and practicing oncologist Marc J. Straus, addresses the hopes and the tragedies of his medical profession through poetry. The work is both a commentary on the poet's experience in the medical field and a collection of monologues written from the patient's point of view.
In his second book, Symmetry, Marc J. Straus -- an oncologist as well as a poet -- addresses the hopes and the tragedies of his profession. The work is both a commentary on his experience in the medical field and a collection of rich, vivid monologues written from the patient's point of view. These poems have been composed with a rare sensitivity, not only toward those who are suffering but toward those particulars that distinguish each life -- some poignant, some sweetly comical.
Straus exercises a fresh versatility in this collection. "Repetition", an honest and personal reflection, cleverly bends through past and present. Its details are carefully chosen:
when I was five / the world / looked green from behind my handlebars.
"Le Mas de Luberon", with its sensuous language and rueful tone, is a gem in the tradition of Stephen Dobyns: Symmetry lays bare the desires, the faith, and the heartbreak found in every human heart.
