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Review of Risus Sardonicus

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 relationship, 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 compassion driving a devotion to the marginalized inhabitants at the periphery of the developed world. An early introduction to the problems of the poor and powerless 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 rewarded 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 professional career as a credentialed epidemiologist and specialist in public health as well as an advocate 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.

E.B.B.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease * Volume 197, Number 10, October 2009

Editor-in-Chief, Eugene B. Brody

© 2009 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Reprinted by permission