Alternative Medicine

I enjoyed Dr. Campos poetry because as a nurse I could identify with some of his feelings. He is frank, truthful and writes with an impact not seen often. I highly recommend this book!

I chose the book because I have decided to read more poetry. Dr. Campo is a physician, as I am. Many of his poems strike a familia chord with me. Great work!

I heard Rafael Campo read his poetry many years ago, before I was ill myself, and was quite fascinated by the way he used his knowledge as a doctor to bring the body into poetry.Alternative Medicine comes after The Enemy, which I haven't read, and the themes that he works with seem to have remained the same: his Cuban roots, his experience (or his patients' experience) with healing, and love. The book was divided into parts according to those subjects and my favorite section by far was his poetry that derives from his profession as a doctor. The first section about his family background did nothing for me. There were a couple of love poems I particularly enjoyed and one, "Views of Heaven," that struck me as lovely in its portrayal of the mundane pleasures and annoyances of a long term relationship. It's appropriately delivered in couplets....I don't quite understand the reasons you'llcook your pancakes without a recipe,or keep the thermostat at sixty-threeall winter long, or say you love me whenyou're tardy meeting me someplace, again.I say I love you too, though I prefera simple omelet to pancakes, and turnthe thermostat back up to seventy....These homely, recognizable details of how a couple's bond survives such differences and irritations builds to gratitude that they have both survived against the odds.storms come, and bring their opportunityto do another chore together, seethe world for what it really is. I lookat you, and think that even as you rakethese broken twigs and shattered leaves, I'm yours,and you're the heaven I'm still rising toward.I marked several poems within the section that shares the title of the book. Many of these poems expose pain and his own efforts to respond to pain and death. Here is the second half of "On the Wards":I watched a patient of mine say goodbyeto life. She was alone, like you, alonelike me, she was in agony. She lookedat me, and I, afraid to be the lastthing here on earth she saw, twisted my headto look away. I almost do the sameto you, afraid you might imagine meas later you lie dying, but I don't.Instead, I look at you remorselessly,the way I hope that someday I am seen,the way that each one deserves to be imagined,if not restored to health, then spared this grief.But the stories of the body are not all devoid of lightness as in the delight of "Nude":I enter unexpectedly, and seeyour hair cascading white-and-gray in loose,long tresses down the full length of your back.The nurse is bathing you in honeyed light,when sunrise in the hospital makes allseem gorgeous, even the gleaming bedpan,eve the scuffed linoleum,even the faces peering into death.Your heart is failing, yet you have the strengthto turn, your breasts still the world's nourishment,your eyes, though I have diagnosed in themthick cataracts, alight again with youth'sdemure, coquettish indignation. "Please,excuse me Doctor, I am indisposed!"For just a moment, as you pull the sheetto safeguard your imperiled modesty--your operatic thighs, your blatant hips,your ruined neck with its distended veins--I think you are like Goya's ageless nude,eternal beckoning of human form,inviolable, innocent, a gift,that both of us acknowledge, knowing thatsuch live is too sweet ever to be shared."Pharmacopeia for the New Millennium" is a five part poem that is cultural commentary described as drug descriptions. Here is a sampling:2. HeronilHighly effective for the absence ofinspiring leaders. May also be prescribedfor the treatment of illegitimateelections, lack or loss of civil rights,and disgust with supreme judicial courts....3. WikiporUsed to control delusions of control,democratic knowledge-sharing, and allother false hopes engendered by too muchsurfing on the internet. May cause hivesif taken while downloading music filesillegally or checking out porn sites....I'm not sure that Campo will ever create a deeply memorable pantoum or villanelle but it's not going to keep him from trying. Certainly he has subject matter that may pay off in something great. In this volume, I would say his attempts at poems with repeating lines is interesting but not extraordinary. Given that this is a book with a strong section on medical practice, his love of repeating forms made me think of these forms as rib-like.I've found myself curious about his earlier books Landscape with Human Figure and What the Body Told (which is probably the one I heard him read from). While I wait to get around to them on my wishlist, I'll pass this book along to my sister who is a massage therapist and who describes herself as an anatomy nerd. This book would be a great gift for anyone in a medical profession who also enjoys poetry--as well as for anyone with a problematic body that results in a lot of contact with doctors. It's provides an important perspective on the challenges they face.

A book that cuts to the heart of what it means to be human. I cannot wait for Dr. Campo's next book!

This is a book so rich in compassion, empathy, anger, satire, precision of observation and command of language, that it is a kind of medicine to treat the emotional coldness of our time.