In “A Visit to Digital Imaging,” we are guided on a journey, not just to the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner but also through inner physical and even spiritual spaces. So perhaps it is unsurprising that the poem is composed in terza rima, the same form invented by the great medieval Florentine poet Dante Alighieri to create his tripartite opus “The Divine Comedy.” The form’s 3-line stanzas, or tercets (with the interlocking rhyming scheme, ABA//BCB//CDC, etc), are often said to produce the effect of propulsive forward movement as one might feel descending or ascending stairs or traversing a long passageway—or in the case of Dante’s epic, traveling down to hell in the Inferno or back up to heaven in the Paradiso. Here, the form’s movement first wheels us into the radiology suite and then, upon entering the MRI scanner (perhaps a kind of hell for the claustrophobic) rhythmically pulls us downward “to roam the body’s inner marshland.” Strange sights, from “curative leaves of a Bauhinia tree” to “a dumb lump//of flesh entombed in a sarcophagus” further evoke Dante with imagistic otherworldliness. Yet just as we emerge from darkness after the Inferno to a potent image of salvation (“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” [“And we emerged to see—once more—the stars”]), so too are we comforted here: “ready to forget what might conspire under my skin,” the speaker rejoices, “free/to marvel at modern medicine.” Echoing from the 14th century to present day, poetry affirms its complementary healing role.
