The Enemy

by Rafael Campo

In his fifth collection of poetry, the physician and award-winning writer Rafael Campo considers what it means to be the enemy in America today. Using the empathetic medium of a poetry grounded in the sentient physical body we all share, he writes of a country endlessly at war; not only against the presumed enemy abroad but also with its own troubled conscience. Yet whether he is addressing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the battle against the AIDS pandemic, or the culture wars surrounding the issues of feminism and gay marriage, Campo's compelling poems affirm the notion that hope arises from even the most bitter of conflicts. That hope manifest here in the Cuban exile's dream of returning to his homeland, in a dying IV drug user's wish for humane medical treatment, in a downcast housewife's desire to express herself meaningfully through art;is that somehow we can be better than ourselves. Through a kaleidoscopic lens of poetic forms, Campo soulfully reveals this greatest of human aspirations as the one sustaining us all.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2007

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

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although much of Rafael Campo’s writing is informed by his experience as a doctor, to call Campo a physician-poet is too simplistic and limiting. His poetry is far-ranging, covering topics such as his Cuban-American family, being a gay man, practicing medicine since the earliest days of the HIV epidemic, and the events of 9/11. Music soars throughout his poetry. His rhymes and use of form and meter are so subtle that a reader may not even realize she has just read a perfectly executed pantoum.
While the title poem does refer to 9/11, for Campo the enemy is also stigma, discrimination, the inability of medicine to cure HIV/AIDS. The book is divided into four sections. I especially enjoyed the second section, Eighteen Days in France, a series of vignettes and postcards.

I’m here, another country where I wish
there were no AIDS, and they are here with me,
my patients and my friends, their poetry
as yet unwritten, brows not feverish,
still here, with me, where I administer
just joy-pulses loudly beating, hearts stirred.
(Tachycardia At The Cathedral of Notre Dame)

And yet, I know it’s changed me, being here
on this old earth. They’re here, you know, my patients,
the ones who died on me too young
(Postcard Mailed From The Airport)

Campo commands our attention with details and rich images.

We stood beneath the maples and the oaks
as if in rooms laid waste by flood, wet leaves
in golds and oranges and speckled reds
like irreplaceable possessions lost
forever. Brownstones sorrowed quietly
across the street, their countenances old
and knowing, having watched for years
the park and its small tragedies.
(Equinoctial Downpour)

Although many of his poems are somber, there is often a touch of humor. In “Catastrophic Sestina,” Campo recalls a college relationship.

From the dorm’s window, I couldn’t see the street signs
while furiously I was doing my assignment

for Biochemistry. You were doing the assistant
from Thermodynamics lab, maker of volcanic eruptions

Read Campo’s poems out loud and let them sing and resonate.

[Tauwan Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved how beautifully human, outspokenly queer, direct, and often times confrontational this collection was. How cool that our author is both a poet and medical doctor (which added a little more gravitas to a number of pieces here, especially those dwelling on living with or succumbing to AIDS/HIV/disease). Well done. Much love.

[Jemmie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My love has two lifetimes to love you. That's how I can love you when I don't, and still love you when I do."
Some beautiful reflections to be found on the nature of medicine, art, and love in this lovely short collection.

[Meghan MURPHDADDY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Campo's short poetry collection ruminates on matters of gay male identity, medical industry, and love in a society. Campo's voice will make you think and charm you with it's beauty.

[Duke Press]

“The unusual audience Campo has built comes at least as much from his deft handling of rhyme and meter, and those skills are on evidence here more than ever. Rhyming pentameters, sestinas, villanelles, pantouns, rhymed haiku and monorhyme apply the tools of premodern verse to the trials and joys of contemporary life.”--Publishers Weekly

“[A]n enterprising, emotive journey visiting upon many wide-ranging, contemporary themes. . . . Campo's talent is on great display here, soft, smooth, flowing, and soothing enough to pamper even the most hardened of hearts.”--Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter

“A skilled craftsman, Campo works poetic forms to their best advantage. . . . ‘Art never gets it quite right,’ he declares--which may be true, but in Campo’s capable hands, it gets us most of the way there. Recommended for contemporary poetry collections.”--Library Journal

“For readers who are new to Campo's poetry, this collection is a good introduction. He writes of music and celebrates the erotic. He has awe for the mysterious and a familiarity with despair, and he catches frequent hints of God's presence. In this book, there are tiresome days in the clinic and patients who are near death but who will not die. There are poems in which our fragments all fall into place perfectly. . . . Campo's poems show how medicine can best be of service in the absence of cures or quick fixes, and how medical professionals can best be present, mindfully and emotionally, during moments of human suffering.”--Heather A. Burns, New England Journal of Medicine

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

understated with some plain language that does some deceptively heavy lifting.