The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire [Hardcover]

Rafael Campo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

This work aims to bridge the clinical distance of medicine to face the pain of mortality, the brokenness of society and the vulnerability of human beings.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rafael Campo is acclaimed as an important contemporary poet on the basis of his two books of poetry The Other Man Was Me and What the Body Told. In The Poetry of Healing Campo uses his gift for language to explicate and delineate the connections between being a doctor and a poet, a writer and a healer, a gay man and an educator. Campo's topic is always the body and he understands its fragility and resistance, its power and its grace. Campo's prose is precise and poetic; his insights are revelations. The Poetry of Healing is a work of literary grace and compassion--a memoir that illuminates the world with new light and urgency.

From Publishers Weekly

The chief attraction of this book is its unrelenting effort to humanize the medical profession. Several such books have been written by doctors presenting themselves as people rather than only practitioners. Where this one differs from its predecessors, and where it might raise eyebrows in the medical community and the general public, is its insistent connection of healing, intimate relationships and sex. Time and again, the 29-year-old Cuban American poet and general internist who practices medicine out of Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Hospital and lives in Durham, N.C., describes his personal and sexual reactions to his patients: "His erection startled me," he writes of one patient. "I too wished to be naked, to be as available to him in his suffering as he had made himself to me." At one point, he wonders whether he has told too many stories of patients who have changed his life. Perhaps, for a book of this length. But surely not in a world in which doctors pride themselves on their efficient detachment from sex, suffering and personal disaster. It is at this status quo that Campo is effectively taking aim. He is strongest, however, when describing his undergraduate years at Amherst College; Campo excels where narrative overtakes message. Yet he has not found the knack of beautiful prose, and when he gets into theory and policy and away from personal anecdote, the book tends to get confused and wanders. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1st edition (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393040097
• ISBN-13: 978-0393040098
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #619,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sensitive book by a gay, Latino, physician who treats AIDS, November 5, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (Hardcover)

Dr. Campo provides a sensitive and sometimes provocative look at the life of a gay, minority, physician who treats patients suffering from the plague of the 90s, AIDS. Moreover, Dr. Campo, a true humanist and poet, discusses how his passion for medicine and writing have oftentimes seemed at odds with each other. He was able to deal with many, many issues in his life and to use both medicine and writing to heal himself, his patients, and, I believe, some of his readers. He is courageous, too, just by writing this kind of book. I couldn't have imagined a Yale-educated physician acting so "un-Ivy." But, Dr. Campo has spoken out to describe, in vivid detail, his love of medicine and of words and, most importantly, of his patients.

This book is a wonderful, wonderful read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poetry: the miracle cure, September 7, 2000

By 

Bryan Scott (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (Hardcover)

I read Campo's poetry before I knew he was a doctor; therefore, I hope he forgives me for thinking of him as a poet first, a doctor second. But this eloquent book--and indeed, Campo's life--exemplifies the benefits of accessing both sides of one's brain, the creative as well as the analytical/scientific. At times soaring with hopefulness and at others questioning the purpose of life and pondering the darkest moments of despair, Campo writes passionately and intimately about his role in the healing arts. This calling is informed as much by his poetic genius and ability to come face to face with raw emotion, unflinchingly, as it is by his doctoral training.

Campo writes powerfully about AIDS and our relationship to the plague in a way one seldom reads: with practical guidelines, not moralistic platitudes and empty slogans. His essay "Imagining Unmanaging Health Care" is worth the price of the book.

An excellent volume of essays, full of warmth, compassion, and most of all, humanity. Campo has truly become the "warrior-physician" he aspired to be--let's hope managed care doesn't drive him from the profession.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This GLM walks on water!, May 22, 2005

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (Hardcover)

Campo has created a poetic autobiography which describes his life as a gay, Latino doctor and poet. This book exemplifies that a person can be proud of being both a person of color and gay. In addition, we can be artists, healers, and so much more. Though not as effective as Gloria Anzaldua's work, Campo still demonstrates the wonders of inhabiting multiple identities and spaces. At times, he leaves his class-privilege unexamined. Some portions are repetitive. Nevertheless, I feel fortunate that I found and read this series of essays. Knowing that a gay man of color can strive in a demanding field despite bigotry, can perform well at prestigious universities, and can have a long-term partner is quite inspirational for me.