For 25 years, Bellevue Literary Review has been publishing stories, essays, and poems that take readers into the shared space where art and medicine meet. Throughout our anniversary year, we’re marking this incredible milestone by inviting you on a journey through the BLR archive, from the beginning through the present.
Join us each week as we curate special highlights — stories, poems, photos, and more — from each of our issues.
About the Issue
BLR‘s fifth issue featured a striking cover photograph of children at Bellevue Hospital in 1915. What stories in those eyes! (Read more about the photo below.) The issue includes two poems by Richard Blanco, who went on to be the
fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, as well as writing by Rachel Hadas, David Watts, Stephen Dixon, and more.
From the Foreword
“The Bellevue Literary Review straddles the worlds of literature and medicine, with the implicit assumption that literature, somehow, is integral to healing. But precisely what is this relationship? Do we gain insights into our own illness and health by reading about the experiences of others? Does the out-of-body sensation felt while absorbed in fiction help us transcend our earthly torments? Does the use of metaphor in poetry expand our experiential vision? Or is it just that a good book takes our mind off being sick?”
– Danielle Ofri, Editor-in-Chief
In the late 19th century, Dr. Abraham Jacobi, an attending physician at Bellevue Hospital (often considered the father of American Pediatrics), exhorted hospital administrators to hire a “Pediatrist” for the specialized care of child patients. He advocated separating children from adult patients, into their own wards. From the early 20th century until the 1970s, it was not unusual for children to spend long periods as inpatients, often up to a year. They stayed for many reasons, among them illness, abandonment, and temporary housing. During the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, when adult patients were hospitalized, their children were often boarded at the pediatric hospital as well. Each ward had a dining room similar to the one depicted on the cover and patients, if well enough, would gather for group meals. (Photo courtesy of Bellevue Hospital Archives.)
Read Highlights from Issue 5
Each week, we’ll be highlighting one outstanding story, poem, and essay from the featured issue. We encourage you to explore more from the issue on our website or, better yet, to pick up a copy!
The Cult of Me
by Allison Amend
After the war, I settled in Santa Rosa, which is not where I’m from, but is warm, with a good VA hospital. I did a little freelance tech writing for a while, and then I opened the research firm, funded it with grants, and computerized it. After Waco, the government came knocking. Probably to check up on me. Then, when they realized it was on the up and up, contracted me. Now I collect statistics on Millennial cults. All kinds: Christian Doomsday, UFO Deliverance, Avenging Planet, Angry Separatist, New Age, Christ’s Coming, Asteroid, and Y2K Chaos Cults. The database is cross-referenced by members’ names, ages and races, leaders and ideologies, geography and possessions. It is this last piece of data the government wants; Uncle Sam’s just got to know who’s stockpiling ammo and who’s building fallout shelters underground.
Nothing surprises me anymore. People will believe anything, if they want to strongly enough. And that’s why I’m the one who does the research, because there’s a part of me that wants to believe, too.
The Raft
by Toni Mirosevich
They are all on the raft at the beginning, everyone who ever counted in your life, along with those who didn’t count, the resolved and the unresolved, every true blue friend, every nemesis, every good neighbor, every bad, your kindergarten teacher, the school bully, swim instructors, car mechanics of honest and ill repute, the quiet man you saw every morning at the coffee shop who nodded as you entered, your favorite checker who rounded down the total more than once, the shifty tax accountant, the girl who gave you your first kiss, the one who chose another, every inconsequential affair, and on there too, everyone of consequence, the inner circle, family, blood, those you call your loved ones, your one and only.
Socks
by Meg Kearney
My father’s body has ceased to shock me.
His skin runs over his bones like a slow
river, rippling where belly meets hip. We’ve
learned how to hold him: one arm each around
his back, a hand braced under a thigh; Mom
and I stand on opposite sides of his
bed and, on the count of three, lift him / onto the bedpan….
BLR — at the forefront of publishing creative writing about health, illness, and healing — was featured in The Washington Post on August 3, 2003.