Elizabeth Beam
Collecting Echoes

AwardBlue Ribbon

SchoolGilmour Academy

CityGates Mills, Ohio

TeacherCoreen Schaefer

InternBrendan Mulcahy

MediumPoem

Writer's Statement

This villanelle traces the journey of the transducer, from its invention to its insertion into a catheter to its path through the coronary artery. In accordance with the villanelle form, the first and last lines of the initial stanza are repeated throughout the poem. By echoing the same phrases, with slightly different meanings due to different contexts, the form of this poem reflects echoing ultrasound waves. Between the stanzas of the conventional villanelle, I inserted rhyming couplets which echo the same rhyming sound as they more deeply explore the coronary arteries via ultrasound transducer. High frequency ultrasound waves, which are converted to light waves in the form of images on a computer screen, are now transformed into words.

Best in Show Language

Other Work by Elizabeth Beam: Seeing Via Sound and The Heart of the Matter