Description
Book SynopsisThe latest collection of poetry by Campo.
Trade Review“
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
“
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 * New York Times Book Review *
“[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 *
“[A] powerful collection. . . .” -- Gregg Shapiro * Windy City Times *
“[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 *
“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 *
“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 * Front Page *
"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 * Hudson Review *
"While the settings in this collection vary widely — a blacked-out Cuba; a bridge in Florence; a Fayetteville back road — it was the moments in which Campo focuses on the human figures populating these landscapes that resonated the most with me. . . . Moments like these, in which Campo captures some of the nuances of healing, are woven throughout the collection, and remind us that sometimes creating emotional distance — even in writing poetry — is the only way to steel against pain." -- Ricardo Hernandez * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
I. Landscape with Human Figure
On New Year’s 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 Brother’s 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 Valentine’s 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
