Alternative Medicine | Duke University Press

In a style both precise and emotional, playful and earnest, Campo delivers a most extraordinary message: that in writing, in seeing, in remembering, and in being, we embody, simultaneously, the ache as well as the cure. Briana Shemroske, Booklist

Ive rarely heard someone describe his or her doctor as accessible. Rafael Campos poetry has always been unapologetically so, but his formal decorum (from dcor: beauty, grace) makes for poems that are both objects of deep contemplation and acts of open-hearted expression. In a word, art. Steven Cramer, The Arnold T. Gold Foundation blog

"These poems are thoughtful, grounded, elegant and free of B.S. If only more doctors, preachers and writers were willing to do this in the midst of teaching and healing: to listen, and to speak the truth even when that means admitting the truth is not fully to be had, at least not yet." Seminary Ridge Review

Dr. Rafael Campo's poems are precise and incisive. You measure their beats as if listening through a stethoscope. You feel the scalpel cut through to your soul--eschewing anesthesia because you want to be awake and alert for Campo's kind of surgical intervention. He slices through the facade of your life to pull back layers of skin and mores to the core mystery of the purpose of your body. Tom Lombardo, Canadian Medical Association Journal

Rafael Campos Alternative Medicine is indeed what this doctor orders. And it is alternative: to the tunnel vision, where-did-the-day-go, mind numbing way I, and I daresay many of us, frequently pass time. Take a swig or a nibble, hold the poets hand, meet a new universe. Audrey Shafer, Journal of Medical Humanities

Alternative Medicine is a stunning and valuable tribute to humanitarian love as the one necessary constant in a chaotic world where suffering is all too real. These wise and humane poems are therapeutic and generous. As such, they are essential reading for anyone who feels not only compassion for those who suffer but also believes it is our duty to live a life in the service of humanity. Sonja James, The Journal (Martinsburg, WV)

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Alternative Medicine | Duke University Press