The Enemy

Latest volume of poetry by Rafael Campo.

Publishers Weekly

Campo's substantial following comes in part from his background and his achievements: the Cuban-American doctor, now teaching at Harvard Medical School, has written fluently and movingly, in four previous books of verse and two of prose, about his heritage, his work of healing, and his love life as a gay man in the age of HIV/AIDS. The unusual audience Campo (What the Body Told) 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. "A Simple Cuban Meal" reflects, over "roast pork,/ black beans and rice," "how little pleasure teaches us in life"; several vivid pages translate poems on erotic and political themes by Neruda. In the titular villanelle-one of several lyric works related to September 11-"We fear the enemy is all of us." Toward the collection's more optimistic close, a long-term lover, a rainstorm, crocuses and a New England beach become the poet's allies, and readers are privileged to watch him "realize/ it's in another person's heart, his eyes/ that the story of us achieves completion." (Apr.)

Rafael Campo teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Landscape with Human Figure, winner of the gold medal in poetry from ForeWord Magazine; Diva, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and What the Body Told, winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Poetry; all also published by Duke University Press. He has written two books of essays, The Healing Art: A Doctor’s Black Bag of Poetry and The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor’s Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire, winner of a Lambda Literary Award for memoir. His poetry and essays have appeared in periodicals including The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Republic, Out, The Paris Review, and The Washington Post Book World.