Yes, I did perform quite a few autopsies  ̶  and sliced countless brains, outside their respective bodies. Many pathologists do autopsies, in addition to the microscope and lab work. While not as glamorous and dramatic as it may seem, this work has to be approached with passion, with artistry even. Of course, you also need running water, good scalpels and scissors, tens of cassettes for tissue samples, and solid training. You have to understand the body in front of you and its history, be organized and know the routine. At the same time, you need to be open to the unknown, willing to be surprised. You constantly think in terms of possibility, perhaps more so in research than in the largely algorithm-based clinical work, which emphasizes precision. As a medical student, I planned to pursue a career in Psychiatry, but my newly minted physician self decided it was time to stop scratching the surface and study Neuroscience and Neuropathology, the inner workings of the brain disease processes. The future of these disciplines looked especially bright during the nineties, the Decade of the Brain. Researching the nervous system proved to be in many ways like investigating other areas of the body. Many techniques and experimental approaches are similar. The implications differ. One seeks to unveil mechanisms that affect the way humans relate to the environment and to each other, the way they see themselves. I thought in terms of possibilities, yes: the possibility that the molecules I focused on were involved in generating disease, the possibility that dementia and Parkinson’s disease will disappear from patients’ lives. And these possibilities were, are, exhilarating and extremely motivating.

 

 

I could elaborate endlessly on how bodies and poems are similar on many levels, macroscopic and microscopic, and on how they function well or not. On how they reveal themselves upon dissection. On the many ways for a body to be unlike a good poem, that include its disappointingly ephemeral nature. I will not do it. The one who brilliantly addressed the lyricism of the body was Whitman, in his “Poem of the Body”:

 

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more

than a helpless vapor – all falls aside but

myself and it,

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth,

the atmosphere and the clouds, what was

expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now

consumed,

Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it,

the response likewise ungovernable..

 

 

Indeed, the poem flows like a good anatomy treatise- a true anatomy epos! One of the old ones, with pictures drawn by real flesh-and- bone hands.

 

And the brain, well, the brain is a very cryptic poem indeed, an endless epic one. We understand a lot about it, and that represents only a small fraction of what there is to comprehend. Maybe it’s better this way. Some things are better left unsaid and some revelations we might be unprepared to receive. It becomes frustrating, however, on a concrete level, when the lack of insight affects the therapeutic potential for the very real patient in your office or under your microscope.

Oftentimes, one has to bear with the deeper meaning of the poem, as with the unveiling of subtle biological processes.

 

In truth, what I find most rewarding is thinking in terms of ways for the nervous system and literature to influence each other. Neuroimaging studies show readers mentally simulate new situations they encounter in narrative passages. The brain lives the fiction. This is huge, both for writers and for scientists.

 

I'll add a question along these lines: Do I think brain scanning would someday provide an objective test to distinguish between “good” and “bad” literature?

 

Absolutely! My guess is the cerebral cortex on good poems, on living metaphors, lights up like a Christmas tree. With a piece that doesn’t engage a reader’s senses and memories, the scan is bland. A total Festivus. What intrigues me is the fact that, to my knowledge, nobody looked at the creator’s brain by means of functional imaging. The brain-on-reading vs., the brain-on-creating poetry. With any controls one can muster. That should be a juicy study, and very difficult. Experimenting with neurons and poems- that sounds like a life’s dream come true, and unified, doesn’t it?

 

 

It is an integral part of me, so it must affect my writing, I suppose. This being said, I avoid biomedical details like the plague, but they do sneak in and inform some pieces, mainly memoir work.

Meanwhile, here are the bodies of my poems, to be seen, perhaps explored, dissected by those who care to do so. And here is my brain, grateful for it!

 

 

It started with a pacifist thought, of the sort I constantly entertain, and morphed into a discourse on the deeper resorts of warmongering. An attempt to integrate the bellicose tendencies of the human race into the larger rhythms of nature, into the rhythms of life. There are at least two main avenues for interpreting the poem. The symbols can be reversed. The generals may be symbolic, or the plants. Either way, the universality of violence is disconcerting.  One can attempt to think of it as a variant of normal behavior. Chimpanzees wage wars. Seeds need guts, need spunk to brave the exterior and explode. Plants are embroiled in their own wars- one of them against time. Not to speak of invasive species and noxious weeds. I find it difficult to think in these terms. Controversial as it may appear, I saw a parallel between the cycle of plant development, on one hand, and the cycle of human emotions and behaviors, on the other hand, with war a moral and functional regression. The Generals, each with its own appearance and personality quirks, symbolize this involution, suggestive of a plant dystopia.  They effect a state of aggression, in which the plants ultimately decide to reverse their cycles, and hide indefinitely.

 

I don’t have a niche, and I don’t perform, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t choose this poem.

It’s obviously not the ideal one to be read out loud. You cornered me, so I would suggest: General Vertical-Arrow, General Lemniscate, or Without Bound. Perhaps not as poignant as on paper, but still full of possibilities.

 

 

More graduate studies. I was accepted in a PhD program. Pure ecstasy! World renowned neuroscientists and neuropathologists make their home here, both at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and at Carnegie Mellon University. So I came, and was pleasantly surprised with the Euro flair many ‘Burgh neighborhoods boast. I fell in love, and I returned here, after a stint in San Francisco.

 

 

Language shapes our brain. One example: bilingualism, studies have shown, somehow protects against Alzheimer’s disease. Language can direct our thoughts and moods, their mobility and plasticity. The opposite is also true. To me, the ability to think and write in different languages is both a blessing and a curse. I’m going to leave it at this. Perhaps this is why I rarely write in Romanian, although it does happen from time to time, especially in correspondence. I do not translate- it’s, of course, a betrayal (she says, and lifts the solemn espresso demitasse to her lips, pinky in the air). A necessary evil, no doubt. I don’t have to be engulfed by it, not now. There is but one exception: Romanian nursery rhymes. I do translate them into English, for my sons. On a good day, I also dream of writing a stanza in German.

 

“Danke schoen, Kaite Hillenbrand!

Die Fragen waren faszinierend.”

 

Here, I’ve done it. Tchuess!

 

 

 

Petrified kernels of old wars limp into the neighborhood, into the neighborhood, largely ignored.

 

General X thunders. General Y burps and sees things. General Z slumps, passes out forwards. Corporals of lead open their names for posterity to promptly forget.

 

General ↕, on the other hand, fears nothing but tree crux chains and human skin shields. General ∞ grapples with wrinkled cotyledons—wilted Narcissus, fertile and feeble.  General  Bric-a-Brac hides gold nuggets in his heavy war mouth. General ™, seasoned and stout, aches to plant lush baobab and mayhap jumping onion mazes in each and every no man’s land. For wars on end.

 

Noisy delirious grains trapped in a circus planter reverse their germination and shoulder to shoulder undergo a bellicose decay in solitude.

 

Can war with time turn victors into cowards?

 

If not, just wear a coat of mail under your tegmen-pericarp-aleurone. Shield that pale

embryo, for in time no one will ever feel or pierce it.

 

If yes, think what a conflict lies in seeds!

 

 

 

 

 

she recapitulates my anatomy

from cortex

to toe.

 

*

he envies my womb.

he lashes out in lone spurts.

 

he dreams of oceans, nameless ancestors and

extirpating my ghost hymen.

Terra firma.

 

*

for a long time, she believed I breathed like plants

spat nectar

and hid my sleeping prey-drive under tetrahedral

honeycomb hips.

 

self-immolating curvy brain she saw

obeisance in passion

maturity in broad blood stains.

 

*

with arms held out like antennae

sprung fingers of player piano

for a long time

he believed me.

 

 

 

Earthquake in the city

 

undressed choleric multitudes spill from above and from below

sooner or later, later than never

slide out of wombs

shouting “take birth” (or some such dissentiment)

 

the building churns twelve storey shrieks

a purple rust roar drips

from sky to gnarled ground

stock-stills moon jaws sunk shoulder deep

seals oblong  mouths

for the lapsed smoky wail

 

who needs translucent windows drenched in light?

anatomy’s  revealed, contractions rhythmic scuttle back

umbilical lash-blindfold

into earth’s gristbiting and wavy antechamber

 

the metal skeleton speaks once.

 

blood halts in all its twisted tracks

and measures the night seconds.

 

 

 

Life event

 

A bird flies through smoke,

Strokes it and shatters.

Smoke billows on.