I find it hard to read in a hospital; it is like being in a great ship pushing through difficult waters, while outside are people on land, walking about and carrying on with normal lives, oblivious to the choppy waters being navigated so very close to them. Poetry works well in a hospital, I find. Short things, from which you can look up and feel not quite so fragile, not quite so disconnected; for we are all there, or have been, or will be.
