The Long Burnout is the poetic chronicle of a doctor’s burnout, beginning with and continuing past the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, burnout is a primary concern facing the medical profession today, and probably all of society. The anxiety created by the virus and its endless variants was amplified by difficulties in caring for people, preexisting pressures, and ever-worsening resource scarcities. And, when things seemed darkest, the author suffered the loss of his father, which added grieving to the ordeal. However, a slow process of recovery began thereafter, thanks to a supportive family, exercise and healthy habits, the catharsis of writing, and the tincture of time. These poems express a year of suffering and healing playing out among existential contexts, our place in a world which we are degrading, and a universe we still can’t understand. If only we could reverse our own civilization’s long burnout to achieve a respectful state of equilibrium with our surroundings: homeostasis, biologically, or the Buddhist idea of Oneness with the world.

Dr. Christian Kako intersects with the real world as a family physician but with his STEM in science and roots in art, he plants one iambic foot in each of these worlds: born a musician he finished university as an MD and now serves a large population of clients, their medical conditions, their cares and their cures in Richmond Hill, Ontario, while creating time to devote to poetry. He also collects and blogs about lost progressive rock and fusionary LPs, spends a great deal of time with his two wonderful boys who he hopes will never be concerned with doomsday scenarios or books on the subject, and with any luck will see pandemic poetry more popular than Twitter one day, though without the pandemic experience.

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