The Poet as our Mentor 

This is an essay about nursing.  This is an essay about what it is to be a nurse.  This is an essay that says nursing is about feeling, about feeling how the other person feels.  The nurse strives to find those feelings.  I believe the path she should take is the one that leads to poetry.  The poet e.e. cummings said:  “A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.” (Trautman,1971, p.725).  To read a poem, to absorb a poem, is to capture a glimpse of the feelings of another.  It is through such glimpses that the nurse may better come to understand.