Malformations of the Human Heart
a poetical biography of the 18th century comparative anatomist John Hunter and his wife, Anne, a poet and lyricist for Josef Hayden
From the note by George Myers, Jr.:
"A wonderful book. Haunting. Part documentary poetics, part historical portrait, part meditation on the heart as organ, instrument, wound, and archive. [It shows] that to study the body is also to stand near mystery. And that love, like anatomy, may be most revealing where it is most fragile."
From the cover text, by Norman Lock:
Reading this book, I felt as Gertrude Stein's first readers would have--a sense of participating in something rare and marvelous.
Excerpt
though animate
I use the dead
for science
of the living
so I know
what happens
to the heart