Dos Madres Press, paperback

Publication Date: March 6, 2024

Publisher Marketing: Richard M. Berlin's fifth collection of poems, TENDER FENCES, spans the arc of the poet's career as a doctor and psychiatrist. Beginning with his family's hopes and expectations, and his own dream to become a doctor, Berlin explores the challenges of medical and psychiatric training, his years of practice, and the deep rewards that grow from healing relationships structured by a "tender fence" which provides the necessary boundaries for closeness and distance. Berlin's voice touches on themes of intimacy, love, the doctor-patient relationship, the drama of psychotherapy, a doctor's sense of responsibility, transience, aging, and the satisfactions that come from a healer's life. With these poems, Richard M. Berlin confirms that medical and psychiatric practice fit well with Pablo Neruda's description of poetry as, "Entrance into the depth of things in a headlong act of love."