Robert Charles Basner
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Robert Charles Basner, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Medicine of Columbia University, is heir to the farms, fields, foliages, and fervents of place slipping shyly off the Catskill Mountains. Dr. Basner earned his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, an Alpha-Omega-Alpha awardee. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and his pulmonary/critical care fellowship in the respiratory division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he was an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr Basner served as Professor of Medicine at Columbia University at the Irving Medical Center in New York. He was the founder and director of the Columbia University Cardiopulmonary Sleep and Ventilatory Disorders Center, as well as the director of the pulmonary exercise laboratory and the Cecily and Robert Harris Pulmonary Diagnostics Center. He was also pulmonary consultant to the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig MDA/ALS Research Center at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He continues to serve in the Department of Medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center as a Special Lecturer in Medicine.
Dr. Basner is internationally recognized as a clinician, physiologist, and biomedical researcher, educator, editor, and author. He is best known for work elucidating the physiology of upper airway muscle control during breathing, the cardiovascular consequences of sleep deprivation, the pathophysiology of cardiovascular perturbations of obstructive sleep apnea, the associations between adverse pregnancy outcomes and sleep-disordered breathing, and optimal ventilatory regimens in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and in patients with heart failure.
Dr. Basner also holds a Bachelor of Music degree in music from the City College of New York, where he studied composition and conducting. He has also studied at the Unterberg Poetry Center in NYC, and has been featured as a reader in numerous venues including the Woodstock Poetry Society, and Planet Poet-Words in Space, an edition of the Writer’s Voice on WIOX Community Radio. His first collection of poetry, For Medicine, Memoriam, was published by Spuyten-Duyvil Press in April 2025.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
My poetry reflects a youth imbued with and loyal to the Eastern European Jewish immigrant burdened and joyed experience of Sullivan County in NY (the \”Borcht Belt\”) where my grandparents farmed. The poems are haunted by the paintings and musical compositions of Jewish victims of the Shoah. The poetry is also the elegy the Jewish musician must master. My poetry is the plaint and burden of the Jewish physician-clinician, educator, researcher, and author-particularly privileged and devastated by devastating illness of cardiorespiratory failure, and the unimaginable suffering of those with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. And my poetry is of the ageing and aged Jew, allowed to age with poetry, and not.
Published Works
For Medicine, Memoriam (Spuyten-Duyvil Press, April 2025).
Author Site
Links to Sample Works
Woodstock Poetry Society Member website:
https://www.woodstockpoetry.com
Current Title
Education
City College of New York (undergraduate)
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (M.D. degree)