Clinic day

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden's second book of poetry, Clinic Day, (choreo)graphs the experiences and thoughts and feelings of three characters (The Secretary, The Surgeon, and a wanderer named -- not inaptly -- Blake), who perform a pas de trois of yearning and loss and occasional moments of grace. If at times the dance has a fevered quality, it is also, always, electrically alive and exquisitely shaped. In the clinic that lies at the heart of this unravelling day there is no panacea and no placebo, but there are the consolations of attending with clarity and honesty, and the healing powers of image and metaphor and wit.