Dying For Beginners

A nationally recognized leader in palliative medicine describes his journey to the bedsides of the dying and shares the lessons he has learned there

poems by
Patrick Clary

foreword by
Donald Hall

introduction by
Monica Wood

Patrick L. Clary, MD, is Board Certified in Family Practice and in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Educated at Georgetown College and later at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, his first professional training was in poetry as a student of Roland Flint. 

His work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, CoEvolution Quarterly, Patient Care, Journal of Palliative Medicine, JAMA and Journal of Medical Humanities, as well as in anthologies, literary magazines and two collections: Notes for a Loveletter, and Old Friends. A conscientious objector on the basis of his Quaker beliefs, he served as a medic with US Infantry Units in Vietnam 1969-70. 

.  More About the Author

What Other Writers Are Saying

Patrick Clary, his compassion combined with fierce attention, sees the dying and schools his own center to make each beginner’s journey into death as gentle as may be.  Quaker, Buddhist, Vision Quester, he has condensed his diverse experiences into a book of poetry suitable for mortals, or anyone who loves them.
– Donald Hall, Poet Laureate of the United States

The poems beckon us to silence as they give voice to what might fill that silence.  They whisk us away from the teeming world by lighting our way back into that same world.  They answer the questions we never thought to ask, and question the answers we never thought to doubt.  And they end with beginning.
 – Monica Wood, author of Any Bitter Thing, My Only Story, & Ernie’s Ark

A skillful physician who practices the therapeutic power of words, and a poet whose words lay bare mortal truths, as if performing an exploratory laparotomy of the human condition.
–  Ira Byock, MD,  Director of Palliative Medicine at Dartmouth

The work week has consumed all my hours until this very minute, when I sat down with Patrick Clary's new book of poems, "Dying for Beginners"...I couldn't stop reading his poems; so, just like that, the work week took a hike. 
–  Karl Weyrauch, MD,  American Association of Physician Poets