1. POEMS Free verse / Formal structure. explanations?
Trichinella (nematode)
larva is “dormant” in muscle tissue
spiral, white
released by in stomach juice
20x24. Acrylic..

2. description  waiting

3. schistosomes “blood flukes” schistosomiasis
MERCK INSTITUTE FOR THERAPEUTIC RESEARCH
schistosomes
“blood flukes”
schistosomiasis
therapy
[7 years] [contraceptive]

4. double and quadruple rhyme in each verse.
SCHISTOSOME SEX
monoecius/dioecious
NEXT POEM 
more rhymes than lines
double and quadruple rhyme
in each verse.
18x24 in. Acrylic.

5. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 31: 4, 1988

6. About half-a-dozen scientists died of Yellow Fever
BARGAIN
About half-a-dozen scientists
died of Yellow Fever
while investigating it
and three or four lay volunteers
so let’s say ten all told
give or take a couple
and then millions of people
didn’t die of Yellow Fever
and that’s a pretty good bargain
any way you look at it
isn’t it?
answer me.
dammit, answer me!
William C. Campbell.

7. “River Blindness” Onchocerca volvulus ONCHOCERCIASIS
Mectizan® ivermectin, Merck & Co., Inc.

8. Next poem -- about Onchocerca
-- it is the larvae that cause blindness,
-- most larvae are in skin, not eye.
Again from worm’s point of view).

9. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 32:108, 988.

10. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 12, 580, 1989

11. “CAGED”
Poems: preferably multiple hearings
…the poem is not about malaria or the parasite
…the poem is not about songbirds in cages,
…the poem is about?
a complex issue
not taking a stand – a reflection

12. Elizabethan sonnet
… a parasite in a cameo role (agent of MALARIA)
… spoken in the voice of the parasite …
… a parasite that is not happy with the way humans presume to assign importance to various animals.

13. 156 | Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 31,1. Autumn 1987

14. THE SONNET
ITAL. a b
--- c d
ENG. a b c d e f
--- g
ROSS & GRASSI a b c d
--- … e
POEM 
Reflection on priority disputes.
Discovery that the malaria parasite, Plasmodium,
Is transmitted by mosquito.
Italianate in the turn;
English in couplet;
Atypical in rhyme.

15. Perspectives in Medicine and Biology 33: 49, 1989. William. C. Campbell

16. VILLANELLE VIRUS (HIV) a Line 1 b Line 2 a Line 3 19 lines, 2 rhymes .
13 lines, rhyme a
6 lines, rhyme b
(2 lines 4x) .
VIRUS (HIV)
The next-to-last poem: deals with a pathogenic microbe – the AIDS VIRUS. It lies outside the conventional boundaries of ‘parasite’, but of course it can be considered a very parasitic organism.
The picture is small because I have never liked it – but it is the only one in which I have included a virus!
The structure of the villanelle is more bizarre than any of the other structures I have mentioned -- involving a complex repetiton, not just of rhymes but of whole lines -- best known is Dylan Thomas’ Do not go gentle into that good night.
[Do not go gentle .]
AIDS … would be presumptuous
Written in1980s, AIDS more fatal then.

17. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 32: 1988

18. YOU CANNOT HEAR ME