Risus Sardonicus - Hardcover

Warren Martin Hern

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0979220505 ISBN 13: 9780979220500

Publisher: Alpenglo Graphics, 2009

Synopsis

Risus Sardonicus is an original book of stories, poems, essays, anecdotes, and over seventy photographs by Warren Martin Hern, and it resists classification. It is a compilation of thoughts and observations collected over several decades of the author's life. The book contains some of the author s outstanding wildlife and landscape photographs of North and South America and unique portraits of his beloved Shipibo Indian friends, but the writings of the author are at its core. The writings range from poignant to exuberant to painful to funny. Their scope ranges from intimate to global. Risus Sardonicus is a Latin term for the characteristic expression seen on the faces of people who are dying of tetanus. The sardonic smile results from the painful and continuing spasm of the victim s facial muscles. The title poem of this book describes the death throes of an Ibo baby in West Africa, whose suffering the author witnessed in 1961, and to whose memory this book is dedicated. This extraordinary collection unfolds from a life lived deeply. Dr. Hern s experiences roam over a wide range, including early surgical lessons in the Peruvian Amazon and adventures with his Shipibo friends; the turbulent streets of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago; life and political action in Boulder, Colorado; and the deaths of his father and his friend Segundina. Risus Sardonicus is a rich slice of human experience.

About this title

About the Author

Warren Martin Hern is a physician, epidemiologist and photographer living in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife and son, who is thinking seriously about becoming a pirate. Warren has lived in Colorado since he was brought here by his parents at the age of three and has lived here mostly since then. He is a 1956 graduate of Englewood High School, a 1961 graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder (speech, anthropology, and chemistry), and a 1965 graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also holds an appointment as assistant clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus. He is the author of numerous scientific and professional publications, including a medical textbook, Abortion Practice. His photographs have been published in and on the covers of Sierra Club publications; National Geographic books; Natural History magazine; a collection of top wildlife photographs, Celebration of Life (Mexico City: Agrupacion Sierra Nevada, 1997); and others.

Review

Warren Hern's title for this unique composition of poetry, photographs, and essays reflects the complexity of the man, himself. His book is not a linear narrative, but a collection of snapshots of his mind s interior, embodying the contradictions and perceptual richness of a superior and driven intelligence. Thus, the risus, the smile at the title s center, is not an expression of pleasure or rel-ationship, but a blind product of the muscle spasms of tetany. Its perceived sardonic message conveys meaning invested in it by the observer, a physician and poet (p. 11): ...sharp, short cry, stretching violentlymouthtwistingtoatortured sarcastic smilefrown... The tortured smilefrown which seized Hern s attention was part of the death struggle of a Nigrian Ibo child to whose memory this private work of art is dedicated. The photograph and the book s contents suggest com-passion driving a devotion to the marginalized inhabitants at the periphery of the developed world. An early introduction to the problems of the poor and power-less came with his assignment as a medical officer with the Peace Corps in Brazil in 1966. His fluent Portuguese reflects the passion with which he embraced his life-saving and enhancing duties there and elsewhere. But central to his story are the Shipibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, at one time regarded as subhuman by the Mestizo descendents of the continent s Spanish conquerors. Hern s treating them with dignity, his mastery of their language, his efforts to improve their health and better their existence, were re-warded by his designation as a shipibaopanebaque, adopted son of the Shipibo. To this day he wears a necklace given him as a token of belonging. Many of his book s most striking photographs are portraits of the Shipibo. But he is also revealed as a gifted photographer in his animal portraits of the Americas which have been displayed on calendars and magazines and in a volume entitled, Celebration of Life. Hern s short poems, expressing a passionate involvement in life, are at the emotional heart of his book: Brazilian Girls are very/ornamental/And they rouse in me/an impulse that is/simply elemental (p. 117); In Creature of your Heart s Desire, I yearn to be/Your dream and ecstasy/As you have become mine (p. 103). Other poems, within the same covers, suggest a coexisting and barely encapsulated rage, laced with contempt for the world s holders of social power. On the book s very first page: To have power in America/You must have a prostate/bigger than your brain. This sardonic reference to male power comes after a long pro-fessional career as a credentialed epidemiologist and specialist in public health as well as an ad-vocate for women s reproductive freedom. As a provider of late-term abortions and the author of a major text, Abortion Practice, he has been a target of pro-life organizations and individuals. His bravery and convictions have been more sorely tested in US society, where he has faced repeated threats of violent death, than in the jungles of Peru and Brazil. A realistic view of what is required to do good is expressed in the poem, Complicity (p. 21): I have resigned myself to/ temporary/complicity with evil/in order/to accomplish certain/ strategic things/for people/whose suffering is more important/than my need/to maintain/moral purity. Risus Sardonicus offers the clinician and social scientist an unusual introduction to the study of culture, health and disease, highlighting the personal feelings of an observer who has been, truly, a participant in the lives of those he studies. --The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease * Volume 197, Number 10, October 2009 Editor-in-Chief, Eugene B. Brody

Edition details

• Publisher: Alpenglo Graphics
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0979220505
• ISBN 13: 9780979220500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232