Acknowledgments  

I. Landscape with Human Figure  

On New Years Day  

Nightfall in Asturias  

Quatrains for a Shrinking World  

The Blackouts  

Ghazal in a Time of War  

Outside Fayetteville  

What I Would Give  

For My Brothers Wedding  

Landscape with Human Figure  

II. Speak to Me  

In Praise of Experience  

October Afternoon, 1986  

Oysters  

Your Black Eyes  

An Attribution  

Playing Fidel and Peron  

On Valentines Day  

Last Hours in Florence  

Speak to Me  

Poem for My Familiar  

After Losing Him  

III. Afraid of the Dark  

Afraid of the Dark  

IV. Undetectable  

Phone Messages on Call  

Undetectable  

Spiritual, ca. 1999  

On Thanksgiving  

The Same Old Place  

Supernumerary Poem with Fruit Pastries that Allegorically Addresses Death  

On the Virtues of Not Shaving  

The Four Humours  

V. Questions for the Weather  

The Age-Old Problem of Sentimental Verse  

The Couple  

After the Weekly Telephone Call  

For a Dear Friend Who Is Grieving  

Love Poem Written Especially for You  

Living with Illness  

Doberman Pinscher, Dreaming  

Upon Overhearing, Anyone Can Write Like Elizabeth Bishop  

You Can Just See the Cynicism  

Cuban Canticle in Five Parts  

On Christmas Eve  

The Beech Forest  

In Case of Emergency Landing  

Questions for the Weather  

Finalist, Lambda Literary Award

Gold Award Winner, 2002 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in Poetry

Finalist, 2003 Award for Gay Male Poetry

“A Cuban American gay man in ‘unending exile’ (he practices medicine in Boston), Campo writes compelling poems about patients in the ER, probing relationships between doctor and patient, between a patient’s case ‘history’ and the cultural mainstream, between an immigrant family and aspirations to study medicine, between sexuality and the restraint of lovers. Not unlike Chekhov, another physician-author, the steady-eyed Campo comes to terms with the darkest of human problems (‘the muffled screams/ along a hallway to the absolute’) by fusing empathy and clinical accuracy. Strengthened by his hands-on knowledge of healing and suffering and kept gentle by bearing his burdens with grace, Campo asserts that, despite ‘the harrowed world . . . we are together, we are here to stay.’”—Library Journal

“Landscape with Human Figure by Rafael Campo is about not having the luxury to look away. An AIDS physician, Campo boldly defies the myth of the kind and courageous care giver. This is not stylish cynicism but a brave admission of his own limitations. He is made speechless by a dying man’s gentle reproach: ‘You can’t know how I feel.” Just as often, Campo peers curiously into the dreamlife of his patients.”—Philip Huang, POZ

“Campo writes restless, worldly narrative poems, often rhyming, that take—and unapologetically engage—the world as it presents itself. . . . [H]is insouciant, call-them-as-I-seem-them descriptions are luminous, addressing the ravages of AIDS, particularly, with care and respect.”—Publishers Weekly

“Landscape with Human Figure bespeaks compassion, dedication, and the sort of intellectual curiosity you’d expect from an M.D. with a creative writing degree.”—Eric McHenry, The New York Times Book Review

“[Campo] writes candidly and with pictorial clarity and color about love won, matured, alienated, and lost; powerfully about the burden of dark skin in a white society, especially in the sonnet sequence ‘Afraid of the Dark;’ and with satiric bite and rueful sympathy about his people and motherland in ‘Cuban Canticle in Five Parts.’ The physician can heal his readers as well as himself.” —Ray Olson, Booklist

“[A] powerful collection. . . .”—Gregg Shapiro, Windy City Times

“Rafael Campo blends several selves into his persona as a poet—Cuban-American, openly gay man, physician, AIDS healer, teacher. Each facet of his life is brilliantly yet formally depicted in his fourth collection, Landscape with Human Figure . . . . Each rereading will yield new wisdom, heart, and insight—great poems, really, reveal their truths with inspired reluctance. Campo is among his generation’s best poets . . . .”—Richard Labonte, The Front Page

“[A] pleasant and accessible fourth collection of poetry . . . . [T]he gentle, regular rhythms of [Campo’s] poems give them a sense of quiet control. . . . Contemplative, hopeful, and heartfelt. . . .”—Chelsey Johnson, Out

"Campo is too modest to portray himself as hero, but we sense the heroic in him . . . . [P]art of Campo’s courage is his willingness to confront his own dark fears . . . . Dr. Rafael Campo is inevitably a poet of heartbreak; yet he remains a poet of accompanying hope."

—Sydney Lea, The Hudson Review

“Campo confirms his celebrated ability to move from formal verses to far-reaching reflections on alienation and the manifestation of internal energies on external surfaces. With emotion and a technical prowess surgical in its delicacy, the book exposes our raw selves and our travels between beauty and terror.”—Rachel DeWoskin, Boston Magazine

“Memorable moments can be found throughout Landscape with Human Figure, Campo’s fourth book of elegant, eloquent, resonant poetry. . . . [Campo] is not simply an ‘issues’ poet; he also writes about the everyday life of the heart. And even his polemical poems are often engagingly lyrical and fiercely clever, filled, like all his work, with dextrous wordplay, with all manner of rhyme. . . . No matter the subject, Campo’s poetry is as frank as it is insightful. And it is never less than generous and humane.”—Kevin Riordan, Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, NJ)

“Campo uses strong words to speak of what needs to be spoken of, which includes being a brown person and not feeling at home ‘no matter where I go.’ . . . It is a pleasure to read words that do not hesitate or skirt around tough issues. Campo is clear and direct about what it means to him to be Cuban, gay, a poet. A practicing physician, he also writes about the hospital, illness, and caregiving.”—Holly Spaulding, Foreword

“[A]mbitious, elegant poems. . . . [I]n Landscape with Human Figure, Campo’s clear gaze, generous heart and great skill combine to create a resonant and often romantic collection of poems, one that locates and celebrates all our shared ‘outsider’ hearts.”—Kevin Riordan, Philadelphia Gay News

“In his newest collection of poems, gay Cuban-American doctor Rafael Campo calls on all of his various, even conflicting, selves to render some sort of artistic meaning out of the pain, mystery and loss he encounters in life. His poetry also brings up interesting if not troubling ideas about just what poetry is, especially at the beginning of a new millennium that will have even less time for it than the last one. . . . [T]he house of poetry, like God’s, has many mansions; with this collection Campo proves himself a worthy occupant.”—H.E.B., Frontiers News Magazine

"[M]ature and riveting. . . . [Campo’s] ability to write without emotional restraint, and yet without emotional excess, gives readers a glimpse into a fully human life, one beset with contradictions and imperfections that mirror the world’s. . . . [I]n these well-crafted and well-ordered poems that accrue, in collection, both depth and relevance. Campo, writing at top form for several years, sustains and deepens his voice in this volume. Exploring material he has examined in previous collections, he goes closer to the bone here, displaying a new vulnerability within the framework of precisely crafted poems. As always, Campo’s work is visceral, electric, romantic, and haunting."
—Cortney Davis, Medical Humanities Review

“[Campo’s] contemporary verses bristle with immediacy. . . . The poems explore the contradictions of contemporary culture, seeking to define the place of art in ‘the shrinking world.’ ”—David Caplan, The Columbus Dispatch

“Physicians will be particularly moved by Campo’s weary but respectful regard for his patients in the series of ‘Phone Messages on Call.’ They tell of the times we are catapulted into the lives and suffering of patients we barely know, through the portal of a beeper or the ring of a phone. These wonderful narratives, told in rhyming couplets, smack of the impossibility of our work. So many obstacles: HIV infection, poverty, physical abuse, drug addiction. . . . Landscape with Human Figure reminds us all of how we navigate senses of self, in the face of loss and change, with astonishment and sometimes joy.”—Allan Peterkin, Canadian Medical Association Journal

"[T]he majority of Rafael Campo’s verse in Landscape with Human Figure is formal, skillfully using quatrains, couplets, sonnets, and even a sonnet sequence to explore desires between men. . . . [T]he best poems in this collection are simple slices of sexual life, told in quatrains and couplets with slant rhyme, such as 'Your Black Eyes’ and 'An Attribution.’ Throughout, the formality of the poems actually increases their sexiness; the tension between formal verse and images of public, oral, and anal sex—odd images in 'traditional’ verse—creates strains and stresses that are more than just strange; they are erotic. . . . Campo excels at tracing the contours of bodies in heat . . . . Medical images abound, and part of this poet’s 'making strange’ is his ability to see his desires through the lens of medicine. . . . In Campo’s hands, science invites us to consider the strangeness, the inarticulate fragility of our bodies—and of intimacy."—Jonathan Alexander, Lambda Book Report

"In his fourth and most compelling collection of poetry, physician Rafael Campo confirms his status as one of America’s most important poets. His stunning, candid poems . . . rise with equal beauty from a Boston tenement or a moonlit Spanish plaza, yet remain unafraid to explore and celebrate his identity as a doctor, and Cuban gay man.’"

—Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education

"[Campo’s] fourth and most compelling collection, a candidate for another award. In today’s hustle and bustle, this collection of poems is highly recommended to take your mind off of yourself and learn how others might react to life and death, laughter and sorrow, and love and hate. A must book for all academic and public libraries, as well as the personal collections who truly appreciate great poets."

—H. Robert Malinowsky, AIDS Book Review Journal

Finalist, Lambda Literary Award

Gold Award Winner, 2002 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in Poetry

Finalist, 2003 Award for Gay Male Poetry

“A Cuban American gay man in ‘unending exile’ (he practices medicine in Boston), Campo writes compelling poems about patients in the ER, probing relationships between doctor and patient, between a patient’s case ‘history’ and the cultural mainstream, between an immigrant family and aspirations to study medicine, between sexuality and the restraint of lovers. Not unlike Chekhov, another physician-author, the steady-eyed Campo comes to terms with the darkest of human problems (‘the muffled screams/ along a hallway to the absolute’) by fusing empathy and clinical accuracy. Strengthened by his hands-on knowledge of healing and suffering and kept gentle by bearing his burdens with grace, Campo asserts that, despite ‘the harrowed world . . . we are together, we are here to stay.’”—Library Journal

“Landscape with Human Figure by Rafael Campo is about not having the luxury to look away. An AIDS physician, Campo boldly defies the myth of the kind and courageous care giver. This is not stylish cynicism but a brave admission of his own limitations. He is made speechless by a dying man’s gentle reproach: ‘You can’t know how I feel.” Just as often, Campo peers curiously into the dreamlife of his patients.”—Philip Huang, POZ

“Campo writes restless, worldly narrative poems, often rhyming, that take—and unapologetically engage—the world as it presents itself. . . . [H]is insouciant, call-them-as-I-seem-them descriptions are luminous, addressing the ravages of AIDS, particularly, with care and respect.”—Publishers Weekly

“Landscape with Human Figure bespeaks compassion, dedication, and the sort of intellectual curiosity you’d expect from an M.D. with a creative writing degree.”—Eric McHenry, The New York Times Book Review

“[Campo] writes candidly and with pictorial clarity and color about love won, matured, alienated, and lost; powerfully about the burden of dark skin in a white society, especially in the sonnet sequence ‘Afraid of the Dark;’ and with satiric bite and rueful sympathy about his people and motherland in ‘Cuban Canticle in Five Parts.’ The physician can heal his readers as well as himself.” —Ray Olson, Booklist

“[A] powerful collection. . . .”—Gregg Shapiro, Windy City Times

“Rafael Campo blends several selves into his persona as a poet—Cuban-American, openly gay man, physician, AIDS healer, teacher. Each facet of his life is brilliantly yet formally depicted in his fourth collection, Landscape with Human Figure . . . . Each rereading will yield new wisdom, heart, and insight—great poems, really, reveal their truths with inspired reluctance. Campo is among his generation’s best poets . . . .”—Richard Labonte, The Front Page

“[A] pleasant and accessible fourth collection of poetry . . . . [T]he gentle, regular rhythms of [Campo’s] poems give them a sense of quiet control. . . . Contemplative, hopeful, and heartfelt. . . .”—Chelsey Johnson, Out

"Campo is too modest to portray himself as hero, but we sense the heroic in him . . . . [P]art of Campo’s courage is his willingness to confront his own dark fears . . . . Dr. Rafael Campo is inevitably a poet of heartbreak; yet he remains a poet of accompanying hope."

—Sydney Lea, The Hudson Review

“Campo confirms his celebrated ability to move from formal verses to far-reaching reflections on alienation and the manifestation of internal energies on external surfaces. With emotion and a technical prowess surgical in its delicacy, the book exposes our raw selves and our travels between beauty and terror.”—Rachel DeWoskin, Boston Magazine

“Memorable moments can be found throughout Landscape with Human Figure, Campo’s fourth book of elegant, eloquent, resonant poetry. . . . [Campo] is not simply an ‘issues’ poet; he also writes about the everyday life of the heart. And even his polemical poems are often engagingly lyrical and fiercely clever, filled, like all his work, with dextrous wordplay, with all manner of rhyme. . . . No matter the subject, Campo’s poetry is as frank as it is insightful. And it is never less than generous and humane.”—Kevin Riordan, Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, NJ)

“Campo uses strong words to speak of what needs to be spoken of, which includes being a brown person and not feeling at home ‘no matter where I go.’ . . . It is a pleasure to read words that do not hesitate or skirt around tough issues. Campo is clear and direct about what it means to him to be Cuban, gay, a poet. A practicing physician, he also writes about the hospital, illness, and caregiving.”—Holly Spaulding, Foreword

“[A]mbitious, elegant poems. . . . [I]n Landscape with Human Figure, Campo’s clear gaze, generous heart and great skill combine to create a resonant and often romantic collection of poems, one that locates and celebrates all our shared ‘outsider’ hearts.”—Kevin Riordan, Philadelphia Gay News

“In his newest collection of poems, gay Cuban-American doctor Rafael Campo calls on all of his various, even conflicting, selves to render some sort of artistic meaning out of the pain, mystery and loss he encounters in life. His poetry also brings up interesting if not troubling ideas about just what poetry is, especially at the beginning of a new millennium that will have even less time for it than the last one. . . . [T]he house of poetry, like God’s, has many mansions; with this collection Campo proves himself a worthy occupant.”—H.E.B., Frontiers News Magazine

"[M]ature and riveting. . . . [Campo’s] ability to write without emotional restraint, and yet without emotional excess, gives readers a glimpse into a fully human life, one beset with contradictions and imperfections that mirror the world’s. . . . [I]n these well-crafted and well-ordered poems that accrue, in collection, both depth and relevance. Campo, writing at top form for several years, sustains and deepens his voice in this volume. Exploring material he has examined in previous collections, he goes closer to the bone here, displaying a new vulnerability within the framework of precisely crafted poems. As always, Campo’s work is visceral, electric, romantic, and haunting."
—Cortney Davis, Medical Humanities Review

“[Campo’s] contemporary verses bristle with immediacy. . . . The poems explore the contradictions of contemporary culture, seeking to define the place of art in ‘the shrinking world.’ ”—David Caplan, The Columbus Dispatch

“Physicians will be particularly moved by Campo’s weary but respectful regard for his patients in the series of ‘Phone Messages on Call.’ They tell of the times we are catapulted into the lives and suffering of patients we barely know, through the portal of a beeper or the ring of a phone. These wonderful narratives, told in rhyming couplets, smack of the impossibility of our work. So many obstacles: HIV infection, poverty, physical abuse, drug addiction. . . . Landscape with Human Figure reminds us all of how we navigate senses of self, in the face of loss and change, with astonishment and sometimes joy.”—Allan Peterkin, Canadian Medical Association Journal

"[T]he majority of Rafael Campo’s verse in Landscape with Human Figure is formal, skillfully using quatrains, couplets, sonnets, and even a sonnet sequence to explore desires between men. . . . [T]he best poems in this collection are simple slices of sexual life, told in quatrains and couplets with slant rhyme, such as 'Your Black Eyes’ and 'An Attribution.’ Throughout, the formality of the poems actually increases their sexiness; the tension between formal verse and images of public, oral, and anal sex—odd images in 'traditional’ verse—creates strains and stresses that are more than just strange; they are erotic. . . . Campo excels at tracing the contours of bodies in heat . . . . Medical images abound, and part of this poet’s 'making strange’ is his ability to see his desires through the lens of medicine. . . . In Campo’s hands, science invites us to consider the strangeness, the inarticulate fragility of our bodies—and of intimacy."—Jonathan Alexander, Lambda Book Report

"In his fourth and most compelling collection of poetry, physician Rafael Campo confirms his status as one of America’s most important poets. His stunning, candid poems . . . rise with equal beauty from a Boston tenement or a moonlit Spanish plaza, yet remain unafraid to explore and celebrate his identity as a doctor, and Cuban gay man.’"

—Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education

"[Campo’s] fourth and most compelling collection, a candidate for another award. In today’s hustle and bustle, this collection of poems is highly recommended to take your mind off of yourself and learn how others might react to life and death, laughter and sorrow, and love and hate. A must book for all academic and public libraries, as well as the personal collections who truly appreciate great poets."

—H. Robert Malinowsky, AIDS Book Review Journal

“Landscape with Human Figure is a striking achievement. I am moved, as his readers are sure to be, by Campo’s wisdom, maturity, depth, heart, and range of experience.”—Grace Schulman

“Rafael Campo is an accomplished formalist. I hugely enjoy watching him skitter from sestina to pantoum, sonnet to rhymed couplets, to say nothing of his own nonce forms devised as the situation suggests.”—Maxine Kumin

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought