First Do No Harm

In Robert Fagles translation of Vergil Aeneas contemplating the Trojan War cries out The world is a world of tears and the burdens of mortality to touch the heart. Laura Brylawski-Miller intuits the lacrimae rerum the tears in things throughout her poetry and it is not only a result of the classic education she received in her native Italy but a guiding insight that directs her view of the world the shape of her soul. Like the Buddha of Sokkuram she is stunned by the suffering she sees in the world and is left with the only possible response compassion for the human condition. Compassion in her however is not naiveté. This intuition is perhaps what first led her to medicine the sensitivity for the pain of others the need to heal even when that healing process means debriding dead tissue with her poetic scalpel. First do no harm the Hippocratic oath demands but sometimes it requires severe measures as every surgeon knows.