The Other Man Was Me: A Voyage to the New World

by Rafael Campo

National Poetry Series winner, gay Latino

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

118 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1994

About the author

Dr. Rafael Campo, MD (Harvard Medical School, 1992; M.A., English, Amherst College; B.S., neuroscience, Amherst College), is a poet and doctor of internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is also on the faculty of Lesley University's Creative Writing MFA Program.

His first collection of poems, The Other Man Was Me: A Voyage to the New World, won the National Poetry Series Open Competition in 1993. What the Body Told (1996) won a Lambda Literary Award, and Diva was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999. The Poetry of Healing (1996) also received a Lambda Literary Award for Memoir.

Campo is a PEN Center West Literary Award finalist and a recipient of the National Hispanic Academy of Arts and Sciences Annual Achievement Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Echoing Green Foundation. He frequently lectures widely and gives seminars and workshops relating to medicine, literary writing, and culture.

Reviews

[Lucca Ángel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aida

I've never met the guy next door. I know
He's in there-mud-caked shoes outside to
dry,
The early evening opera, the glow
(Of candlelight?) his window trades for night—

I think he's ill, since once the pharmacy
Delivered his prescriptions to my door:
Acyclovir, Dilantin, AZT.
He doesn't go out running anymore.

I've heard that he's a stockbroker who cheats
A little on his taxes. Not in love,
They say—he seems to live alone. I eat
My dinner hovering above my stove,

And wondering. Why haven't we at least
Exchanged a terse hello, or shaken hands?
What reasons for the candlelight? His feet,
I'm guessing by his shoes, are small; I can't

Imagine more. I'd like to meet him, once—
Outside, without apartments, questions,
shoes.
I'd say that I'm in love with loneliness.
I'd sing like candlelight, I'd sing the blues

Until we'd finished all the strawberries.
We've never met, and yet I'm sure his eyes
Are generous, alive, like poetry
But melting, brimming with the tears he cries

For all of us: Aida, me, himself,
All lovers who may never meet. My wall—
As infinite and kind-faced as the wealth
Of sharing candlelight—it falls, it falls.

———
I am SO glad that I happened to stumble upon this gem. Such a lovely, poignant read. And, as a queer person with a similar Cuban-American background, I was really able to resonate with this. I also loved that the author is a doctor—getting to see the height of the AIDS crisis through his eyes was deeply impactful.

[Matthew Eck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illness

Imagine that the bed is not a bed
And illness is a cave, the bags of blood
Stalactites, the doctors eyeless fish–
Imagine that an illness is a cave
From which the body must emerge, but can’t
Because the flesh is always so forgetful,
Because a certain greed has brought it there–
A vein of gold, the River Styx, a dream,
Persephone–imagine that the bed
Is not a bed, that God is waiting white
And glorious, and that the beach, which stings,
Is limitless and has no name except
Romance, or sex, just throbbing there all white
Like Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, God
It hurts, and then the medication, beds
Everywhere, the cave deepening, the cave
A smile in the Earth: she knows the time
Has come, and she remembers everything.

[lauraღ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I watched my raft drift slowly back to sea, 
And wished I’d thought to bring a book 
That told the history of my lost people.

3.5 stars. I haven't read poetry in a while, and this made for a delightful return. Nothing here was a clear favourite, but I loved Campo's way with words, his quirks of syntax and expression and formulating his sentences. Lots of great lyricism, so many little nuggets of gold. My favourite sections were the ones about his grandfather, about experiences and life as a gay man, and poems where he talked about being part of a diaspora. Thoughtful, expressive, really beautiful. I'm glad I read this.

You live—so write!

[Timothy Juhl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another poetry book from my collection that's been sitting on the shelf for several years, probably a thrift store find and bought because I recognized Campo as a gay poet and author. Beyond that I couldn't have told you another thing about his work.

That ends after reading this amazing collection of poems written during the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, and given Campo's chosen profession as a medical doctor, he was on the front lines during those dark days. Campo draws a lot from his personal feelings and encounters with the virus as a doctor and those lines feel as poignant today, more than 20 years later, as they must have hit when first published.

Campo is not only viewing the crisis through his medical lens, but also trying to balance his personal feelings as a gay man. He writes painfully of his own self-doubt, as a man born into the Hispanic culture (a culture that upholds the traditional sense of what it means to be a man). He writes often of the disappointment his father must surely have felt knowing his son was gay. He also writes deeply of the familial love he had for his father.

My biggest praise and admiration for this collection is Campo's deft and incredible ability to write poems in rhyme that never once allude to being in rhyme form. He employs the sonnet form, although not strictly, and much of the work is written in quaterns, four-lines (ABBA). I don't care for poetry that rhymes, and very little of it ever feels less than trite or forced or sing-song. Campo has created a unique voice, employing enjambment and slant rhymes, that are both deceiving and genius at the same time. I often found myself going back to previous lines to make sure there was some sort of rhyme that I might have missed or that Campo perhaps had forgotten to utilize.

The four-star review is only there because Campo does use magical lyricism and moments of surreal poetry often enough to create his rhyming patterns, which detracted from the narrative components of the poems. Doesn't mean those other lines weren't fucking amazing, even if I didn't quite get his meaning.

[Sadifura · Rating 5 out of 5]

an absolutely heartbreaking, breathtaking, andel beautiful poetry collection about death and illness, generational trauma, being gay during the AIDS crisis, and death. absolutely beautiful.

standout poems include:

-camino real
-the lost plaza is everywhere
-another poem in English
-illness
-el curandero (the healer)
-i don't want what i can't say, or, genet on keats
-the love of someone
-cafe pamplona
-san fernando
-in the form
-I. guantanamo
-II. the medicine cabinet
-III. the cure for cancer
-IV. grandfather's will
-V. the cockroach came
-VI. roses in little Havana
-VII. his face
-VIII. his house in Spain
-X. 10509 sw terrace
-XI. anatomy lesson
-XIII. the funeral
-XIV. the things i dont remember (god i love list poems)
-XV. the decline of the Spanish empire
-XVI. sonnet for my grandfather
-I. my father's childhood
-II. keats and shakespeare
-III. planning a family
-IV. family dinner
-V. their long vacations in Hawaii
-VI. advice for the new world
-VII. honest
-VIII. my father's view of poetry
-IX. my patient's heart attack
-XI. what my mother says
-XII. love poem (a particular favorite)
-XIII. i dream I'm him
-XIV. i imagine he is ill
-XV. untitled
-XVI. sonnet for my father
-I. the consequences of love
-II. what i learned from my parents
-III. Oxford
-IV. when Rafael met Jorge (a particular favorite)
-V. the wedding gifts
-VI. our country of origin (a particular favorite)
-VII. he interprets the dream (a particular favorite)
-VIII. we're moving to san francisco
-IX. translation (a particular favorite)
-X. we wear each other's Levi's (a particular favorite)
-XI. a medical student learns love and death (a particular favorite)
-XII. denial (a particular favorite)
-XIV. poem in jorge's voice (a particular favorite)
-XVI. sonnet for our son
-I. the cycle begins anew
-II. adoption
-IV. what loving parents are
-V. kindergarten (a particular favorite)
-VI. my brother's opinion (a particular favorite)
-VII. I explain again
-VIII. his college education
-IX. birthday party (a particular favorite)
-X. gay parents are neither (a particular favorite)
-XV. afterthought (a particular favorite)
-XVI. the daughter of my imagination
-a dying art (for eve) (a particular favorite)
-for j.w. (a particular favorite)
-aunt toni's heart
-the test (a particular favorite)
-allegory
-age 5 born with aids
-technology and medicine (a particular favorite)
-the distant moon (a particular favorite)
-finally (a particular favorite)
-sonnet no. 904 (a particular favorite)

[Paul Cassedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is stunning poetry written in a predominately formalist style by one of the best poets in the US today. Make sure you check out his brilliant collection of prose essays, too!