“Poems Are Bodies That Remind Us We Have Bodies”: Poetry, Medical Posthumanism, and Ethical Practice

This introduction establishes a theoretical framework for understanding how recent poetry communicates the posthuman and engages a posthuman ethics. It introduces the three primary arguments of this book: (1) that biomedicine is in need of a posthuman intervention, (2) that a posthuman poetics is the adequate response to our current historical situation, and (3) that contemporary American poetry has a great deal to contribute to our understanding of the human, a contribution that allows us to revise our ethical practices to meet the needs of our contemporary moment. This chapter also familiarizes readers with posthumanism and new materialism, and discusses the implications these theoretical models have for biomedicine and medical humanism in the new century.