Poetry. Selected for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry. The poems in psychiatrist Richard M. Berlin's second collection, SECRET WOUNDS, explore the emotional terrain of doctor-patient relationships and how doctors' vulnerabilities and psychological scars become the secret wounds they must bear.
(Although) Berlin's subject matter is inherently interesting...medicine is not the excuse for these poems; it is simply their occasion...Berlin's poems are sure, spare, and always open to the task of revealing the mysteries he is privy to. —Gary Young