Michael Salcman
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Michael Salcman (b.1946) is an American poet and physician who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. His poetical work is infused and vivified by his medical profession, his love of and expertise in contemporary art, and by the fact that his parents were Holocaust survivors. His work is characterized by a lushness of diction, a strong moral focus, and a sense of playful imagery.
[edit] Biography
The son of Holocaust survivors, he was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, and came to the United States in 1949. A graduate of the Combined Program in Liberal Arts and Medical Education at Boston University (B.A. and M.D, both 1969), he trained in neurophysiology at the National Institutes of Health and in neurological surgery at Columbia University. He was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland from 1984 through 1991. He is the author of many medical and scientific papers. His art reviews and essays on the arts and sciences and the visual arts and the brain have appeared in Urbanite Magazine, Neurosurgery, Creative Non-Fiction and on-line sites such as www.PEEKreview.net and www.artbrain.org. He has also taught courses on the History of Contemporary Art at Roland Park Country School, the Contemporary Museum, and Towson University, and given seminars on the brain's visual system and art at the Cooper Union in New York and at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.
Salcman's earliest published poems date from 1963. Since then, his poems have been widely published in such journals as the Ontario Review, Harvard Review, Raritan, and Southern Poetry Review. His poems have been heard on NPR's All Things Considered and in Euphoria an award-winning documentary on the brain and creativity. Salcman is the author of the collection of poems, The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises Press, Washington, D.C., 2007) and of four chapbooks: Plow Into Winter (Pudding House, 2003); The Color That Advances (Camber Press, 2003), A Season Like This (Finishing Line, 2004) and Stones in Our Pockets (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007).
His poetry, though lyrical, is dense with information about cultural history, art, metaphysics, and brain theory. His major themes and subject matter is family history and the Holocaust, experiences with patients, and his love of sailing and for the Chesapeake Bay. His work is characterized by careful attention to rhythm and internal music.
