Literature Link for Dec. 18, 2021-Pageant; Healing

• WLT-”Storytelling as Healing in Medicine by Ceilia Simon . This brief article is a book review for Literature and Medicine: A Practical and Pedagogical Guide (Palgrave, 2019), co-authored by Professor Schleifer himself and Doctor Jerry Vannatta. “ Stories and narratives in medicine allow for a genuine connection and glimpse into the shared experiences and communities of our lives, whether we are sitting in the office as the doctor or the patient.” https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/book-reviews/storytelling-healing-medicine-cecilia-simon

• Andrew Sean Greer’s novel Less, which won the Pulitzer Prize

for Fiction this year (2018), “is that rare thing: a funny, entertaining read, selected for a major international award. Its dominant themes are not really cheerful though: an ageing, heartbroken gay writer; the circus that drives contemporary publishing; and the fear of obscurity that must plague anyone with creative ambitions.

Greer’s “hero”, who is anything but heroic, is the eponymous Arthur Less, a 49-year-old American writer on a mission to heal his seriously jilted ego.”

https://www.amazon.com/Less-Winner-Pulitzer-Prize-Novel/dp/0316316121

• Poetry, Permeability, and Healing by Jane Hirshfield. This brief essay from Poets,org discusses the healing power of poetry in a unique, “to the heart of the matter” insight. “Art dwells at the crossroads between what in us is body, what in us is emotion, what in us is history, and what in us is mind. To step into wholeness of seeing and feeling, under any conditions, is in itself restorative. “ The essay ends with

“The following five poems have offered me repeated sustenance, solace, and a renewed sense of that strong antidespairant, amor fati.” https://poets.org/text/poetry-permeability-and-healing

In faith,

Dale Dunnigan