Michael Salcman, Poet and Physician

MICHAEL SALCMAN, AMERICAN POET AND PHYSICIAN

Michael Salcman lives in Baltimore. The son of Holocaust survivors, he was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia in 1946 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 served as chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland from 1984 through 1991. His early medical career was profiled by Jon Franklin and Alan Doelp in their book, Not Quite A Miracle (Doubleday, 1983). He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Columbia’s Neurological Institute in 1985 and of Boston University’s School of Medicine in 2001 and served as President of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The author of almost 200 medical and scientific papers and the author or editor of six textbooks, most recently the two-volume 2nd edition of Kempe’s Operative Neurosurgery (Springer-Verlag, 2004), his books have been translated into Spanish, German, Portuguese and Chinese. As a physician and neuroscientist, he pioneered the use of re-operation, microwave hyperthermia and implanted radiation sources for the treatment of malignant brain tumors, advances in our understanding of the blood-brain barrier and improved micro-electrode and analytical methods for recording and interpreting long-term recordings from individual neurons in the brains of performing animals. Some of his work has significant implications for how the brain functions in creative individuals, i.e. the brain as a metaphor-making machine.

VISUAL ARTS

In the art world, Salcman served as President of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore at a critical junction in the survival of that institution. His art reviews and essays on the arts and sciences & 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 taught an annual course 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 Cooper Union in New York and at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore.

POETRY

Salcman has been writing poetry for almost forty years. His earliest published poems date from 1963 through 1977. After a ten-year hiatus, he began to write again. Salcman spent nine summers at Sarah Lawrence College studying with Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns, Stuart Dischell, Deborah Digges, Heather McHugh and Dennis Nurske. New poems have been widely published in such journals as the Ontario Review, Harvard Review, Raritan, Southern Poetry Review, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, Nimrod, River Styx & New York Quarterly. His poems have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Euphoria (2005), Lee Boot’s award-winning documentary on the brain and creativity.

The author of three chapbooks (Plow Into Winter, Pudding House, Ohio, 2003; The Color That Advances, Camber Press, New York, 2003, consisting of ekphrastic poems; and A Season Like This, Finishing Line, Kentucky, 2004, poems written since the 9-11 attacks), his first collection of poems, The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises Press, Washington, DC) was published in 2007. A fourth chapbook, devoted to poems on medical subjects, Stones In Our Pockets (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison), is forthcoming.

Salcman’s poems, though freely lyrical, are dense with information about cultural history, art objects, metaphysics and brain theory. Often essayistic, recurring references to family history and Holocaust, experiences with patients and the Chesapeake Bay save them from feeling didactic. Mostly written in free verse, the poems contain internal musical effects with careful attention to sound and rhythm; occasional poems are written in received forms.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry

Plow Into Winter (2003) (Pudding House Publications, Ohio)

The Color That Advances (2003) (Camber Press, New York)

A Season Like This (2004) (Finishing Line Press, Kentucky)

The Clock Made of Confetti (2007) (Orchises, Washington, D.C.)

Stones in Our Pockets (2007) (Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Science & Medicine

Neurologic Emergencies: Recognition & Management (1980; 1990) (Raven Press, New York)

Neurobiology of Brain Tumors (1991) (Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore)

Current Techniques in Neurosurgery (1993) (Current Medicine, Philadelphia)

Current Techniques in Neurosurgery (1996) (Current Medicine/Churchill Livingstone, Philadelphia)

Current Techniques in Neurosurgery (1998) (Current Medicine/Springer, Philadelphia)

Kempe’s Operative Neurosurgery (two volumes, 2004) (Springer-Verlag, New York)