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Diva
A major new work from one of America’s most acclaimed younger poets, Rafael Campo’s Diva appears at the intersection of confession and confinement, hyperbole and humility. In his masterful third collection, Campo explores further the epic themes of his Cuban heritage and America’s newness, his work as a doctor caring for AIDS patients and his identity as a gay man.
At once relishing and resisting the poetic traditions of formal English verse, Diva showcases Campo moving deftly between received forms and free verse. In each poem the sound of words is transformed into the highest of arts, the act of performance into the exercise of power, and the most profound abjection into the sweet promise of divinity. Culminating with his new and daring translations of Federico García Lorca’s sonetos—the great Spanish poet’s most homoerotically explicit and formally accomplished poems—Campo’s music instills in the reader an exalted understanding of beauty, suffering, and, ultimately, the human capacity for empathy.From reviews of Campo’s previous poetry:
“Extraordinary meditations on illness and the healing power of words.”—Lambda Literary Foundation
“Read Campo to enter the bloodstream of a man who, with a haunting clarity of vision, shares his memories, his anguish, his healing love.”—Cortney Davis, Literature and Medicine
“Riveting, provocative, and refreshing—[this volume] is a gift to the clinician who is trying to re-invoke in his or her students the humility, compassion, and deep caring that brought us all into medicine in the first place.”—Dr. Sandra L. Bertman, Annals of Internal Medicine
“[Campo] listens to the sounds the body makes, but what he hears is poetry.”—Zoë Ingalls, Chronicle of Higher Education
“Powerful and accessible.”—Jonathan Jackson, Washington Blade
“Bemused, indelible, and heartbreaking.”—Marilyn Hacker, Out
“[Campo’s] private corral of disparate words twist, torque, collide with gorgeous creative imperative.”—Nomi Eve, Independent Weekly
At once relishing and resisting the poetic traditions of formal English verse, Diva showcases Campo moving deftly between received forms and free verse. In each poem the sound of words is transformed into the highest of arts, the act of performance into the exercise of power, and the most profound abjection into the sweet promise of divinity. Culminating with his new and daring translations of Federico García Lorca’s sonetos—the great Spanish poet’s most homoerotically explicit and formally accomplished poems—Campo’s music instills in the reader an exalted understanding of beauty, suffering, and, ultimately, the human capacity for empathy.From reviews of Campo’s previous poetry:
“Extraordinary meditations on illness and the healing power of words.”—Lambda Literary Foundation
“Read Campo to enter the bloodstream of a man who, with a haunting clarity of vision, shares his memories, his anguish, his healing love.”—Cortney Davis, Literature and Medicine
“Riveting, provocative, and refreshing—[this volume] is a gift to the clinician who is trying to re-invoke in his or her students the humility, compassion, and deep caring that brought us all into medicine in the first place.”—Dr. Sandra L. Bertman, Annals of Internal Medicine
“[Campo] listens to the sounds the body makes, but what he hears is poetry.”—Zoë Ingalls, Chronicle of Higher Education
“Powerful and accessible.”—Jonathan Jackson, Washington Blade
“Bemused, indelible, and heartbreaking.”—Marilyn Hacker, Out
“[Campo’s] private corral of disparate words twist, torque, collide with gorgeous creative imperative.”—Nomi Eve, Independent Weekly
112 pages, Paperback
First published August 20, 1999
56 people want to read
About the author
Rafael Campo
31 books37 followersDr. 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.
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.
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June 25, 2012"Diva . . . sings across an extraordinary range of tones and topics. . . . Campo’s poems have always negotiated the difficult terrain of identity across these very complicated categories, and the ones in Diva refine that further, often taking glorious flight as they celebrate the very earthbound complexities of the experiences they explore. . . . His poems both dance and sing, and offer his readers a rare opportunity to enjoy the music of a poetry not afraid, or ashamed, to belt out its beautiful and painful truths.”--The Washington Blade
“[A] virtuoso display. . . . Campo is a master of image. . . . His poems are revealing and courageous.”--Jay A. Liveson, Journal of the American Medical Association
“Like William Carlos Williams and John Stone, Campo is a physician-poet who uses the discipline of medicine to read back to us our fascination with AIDS, the representation of the diva, and the struggle for compassion. . . . In the spirit of Meredith, Campo writes mordant lyrics of dark love that displace trite expectations of what sonnets or canciones should accomplish. His work is devoid of cheap romanticizing.”--Jerry W. Ward Jr., Washington Post Book World
“Rafael Campo is perhaps our most distinguished physician-poet since William Carlos Williams. . . . [His] sense of a common humanity is hard-won against the ugliness, misery, and cruelty that he must confront in his practice.”--David Bergman, The Gay and Lesbian Review
April 21, 2008
this poet is brilliant. he mixes more formal style and free verse together in his poems. and they are moving. laurie-if you read this comment, he has one about the x-files that i'll have to email you.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews