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Retiree embraces first love Photo by Bob Pennell When Ray Teplitz retired as a physician, he turned to an earlier passion: writing. The Rogue Valley Manor resident has published his first book of poetry. Behind him is a Japanese print titled "Joy." Doctor will read from his initial book of poetry By BILL VARBLE Some kids want to be doctors; Ray Teplitz wanted to write. Even when he became a doctor he kept trying to write, but he never liked the results. One day when he was 40, Teplitz took everything he'd written, a lifetime's worth, and threw it out. "In the trash," he says. "Where it belonged." Now 75, Teplitz, has finally published his first book, "The View From Here," a slim volume of free verse, haiku and prose. He plans a reading at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Barnes and Noble in Medford, where the book is available. He sees a renewed interest in poetry these days. "The surprise to me is when I go out to read there are students reading," he says. "I think that's encouraging. "There was a vogue when I was young. Whitman, even Shakespeare. People could spout it. Then it died out." Teplitz was born in Chicago, grew up in Los Angeles and earned his M.D. from the University of California at Irvine. He headed the cytology department at City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles and later taught pathology at the School of Medicine at the University of California at Davis. In the 1970s and '80s he was genetics editor of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. He was a consultant to UNESCO and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Teplitz and his wife, Marlyn, moved to the Rogue Valley Manor in 1997. He'd retired from teaching at UC Davis, and his 30 acres and fruit trees suddenly seemed like too much. These days Teplitz heads a poetry group at the Manor which draws up to 30 people to monthly meetings. Members read their own work or that of other poets. "People go out of there like they've had a shot of endorphins," he says. He thinks poetry euphoria has to do with self expression and connecting with others, despite T.S. Eliot's famous dictum that poetry is an escape from self-expression. "He said a lot of things," Teplitz says. "He thought he could create abstract concepts separate from the self. You can't do that. What he was doing was baring himself." Teplitz likes the challenge of writing haiku: Tranquil hills Born in geothermal pain Comforted by wind and rain "Three lines, 17 syllables," he says. "That's a real challenge." He writes poems about photography, about everyday life, about his parents: In the dream hours Of this morning, I died. I remembered the deaths Of my mother and father. Our reunion was ecstatic. What imagining! What capacities Our minds reveal! Transporting us between Life and death, Earth and whereafter Dead parents and living son. Easily done, In seconds. Just imagine. Teplitz says sometimes he finds himself thinking like a scientist instead of a poet. "I can't help it," he says. "It's the way my head works." He wants to use poetry to communicate scientific principles like Einstein's notions of time and space. "But I try not to write as a scientist might," he says. The underlying point of the book is to leave something of himself to his two daughters. He has a list of 50 poem fragments waiting to be finished. He writes them down when he glimpses them. "Otherwise they drift away." He says another book is already in the works. "I'm really having fun." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA