Very rarely is a book, let alone an anthology of poetry, ever completely successful at what it sets out to do. Horace said, "even Homer yawned," meaning I think that in such a gigantic work such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, some parts will be stronger than others, and one shouldn't be surprised to discover parts that fail completely. Not so this book. I expected a sort of catalog of poems by physician-poets that represented a sort of response to a general "call for submissions." Some master of the craft, some well-intended tyros in need of encouragement. What I discovered is a beautiful anthology of work of 31 poets, each strong in the elements of his craft, each with something strong and focused to say, each a full participant in the great dialogue of the poetics of the body and those committed to its welfare. And in 150 pages, you get the full range of human response: comedy, tragedy; the present, the past; the actors, the acted upon; the physician alone, the physician an heir to millenia of collaborators; the physician as patient, as actor, as observer, as human being. The book is divided thematically into four sections with great care taken by the editors to create a narrative flow. Personally, as a poet, I feel the climax of the story is John Stone's "Getting to Sleep in New Jersey," a poem that does so many thing at the same time and so simply, I read it several times in succession--the first time. It seems, these days, that the essential humanity of every profession is being recognized by one or more anthologies of poetry (I recently read books devoted to farmers, lawyers and chefs). There are, thankfully, several devoted to medicine, notably from the patients' point of view and the interns' point of view. Here you have the doctors' point of view. Wonderful.