A Distant Planet, AIDS Options

[saore]

A Distant Planet

and there,
Beside the thundering waterfall of his heart,
I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”
............................... Rafael Campo


I said,
it's like lifting a cello
out of its case—
“but what do I know
of love's lonely offices”

I'm positive,
he said...
so I chanted
the sweaty shaman's
painted curse

I'd look
inside his throat
to see his misery,
he'd touch his genitals
and think of sin

[Psyche]

Wow, this is powerful, Sergio. You've said such a lot in a few amazing lines.

I'll be back to digest it properly, as it deserves. Aids, not an easy subject.

For now, could you please tell me about the title and the quotation. Are you using A Distant Planet for your own poem as well? If you have time, tell me a little about Rafael Campo.

I hope some others drop by to comment. It's a shame FB has swallowed up members of poetry sites.

Cheers,
Sylvia

[Psyche]

OK, Sergio, I've already looked up Rafael Campo and I'm very impressed by this great physician and poet.

I saw on Slate, which I follow, that he's recently won a prize for an incredible poem which I took time to read, now at 4 a.m.!

His writing focuses on themes that promote equality and justice for gay people, people of color and working-class people. But he appears to write a lot about death and dying. He gives out his poems to patients in the wards.

And what a curriculum! Tx, Sergio, for mentioning this marvellous man here at MM. We have a lot to learn. Do add some more of your own thoughts.

Cheers again,
Sylvia

[saore]

I found a few of his poems in Poets.org and he immediately became one of my favorite writers. I will try to buy some of his books. This is from his site:

RAFAEL CAMPO was born in 1964 in Dover, New Jersey. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Medical School, he currently teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where his medical practice serves mostly Latinos, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered people, and people with HIV infection. He is also on the faculty of the Lesley University Creative Writing MFA program.

He is the author of The Other Man Was Me (Arte Público Press, Houston, 1994), which won the 1993 National Poetry Series Award; What the Body Told (Duke University Press, Durham, 1996), which won a Lambda Literary Award for Poetry; and The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire (W.W. Norton, New York, 1997), a collection of essays now available in paperback under the title The Desire to Heal, which also won a Lambda Literary Award, for memoir. His poetry and prose have appeared in many major anthologies, including Best American Poetry 1995 (Scribner, New York, 1995), Things Shaped in Passing: More "Poets for Life" Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (Persea, New York, 1996), Currents in the Dancing River: Contemporary Latino Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry (Harcourt Brace, New York, 1994), and Gay Men at the Millennium (Putnam, New York, 1997); and in numerous prominent periodicals, including Boston Review, Commonweal, JAMA, Kenyon Review, The Lancet, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, New England Journal of Medicine, New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, Paris Review, The Progressive, Salon.com, Slate.com, Threepenny Review, Yale Review, and the Washington Post Book World.

His work has also been featured on the National Endowment for the Arts website and on National Public Radio. With the support of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, he wrote Diva (Duke University Press, 1999), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Lambda Literary Awards for poetry. He is a recipient of the Annual Achievement Award from the National Hispanic Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Pushcart Prize, and he has served as Visiting Writer at Amherst College, George A. Miller Endowment Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana and Fanny Hurst Visiting Poet at Brandeis University.

The title of the poem is my own. I thought of all the years that have passed since the AIDS pandemic and all the progress in medicine that has been made. AZT was worse than the illness, so many of my friends died from AZT poisoning and it was so horrible to watch some of them die, that is just seems like "a distant planet" now. The poem that I quote is titled "lost in the hospital" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241380

This was written for Rogelio, a good friend. He was so young and talented.

Sergio

[jeannefiedler]

I have experienced people dying of AIDs, and I understand the desolate, sense of "forgotteness" these people have. I had a girlfriend die at age 36, "Tears" at Authspot.com. She was so beautiful, talented and young and was taken from us. What could she have said to herself, except "It's my fault!" I still think about her and miss her. One thing for sure, during the days right before her death, a sense of peace overcame her. She just went with the flow in the present moment. Beautiful communication - such a hard thing to describe, but you did it remarkably well. So sad, thank you, jeanne

[saore]

Thank you Jeanne. Sorry for your loss.

Sergio

[Eisa]

Hi Sergio

This is incredibly powerful and moving.

Thank you for posting the info about Rafael Campo. I love the way you have opened your poem with his quote.

I have read this a few times and see nothing I'd change.

Snow

[saore]

thank you Snow, thank you.

Sergio

[Maureen]

I wouldn't change anything either - you say so much with so little and I think that works really well. Such a difficult subject HIV and one most people prefer to avoid and/or ignore and yet sadly it is still so much a part of everyday life but the pot seems to have gone off the boil with it - the warnings and paranoi that walked side by side with it in the early days seem to have fallen into the background of late. Maybe people think we've beaten it - I don't know

[saore]

Thank you Maureen. Living through the first ten years of the epidemic was horrifying. Today there is just too much silence about the disease.

Sergio

[Psyche]

Thanks for all the info on Rafael Campo, Sergio. He's an amazing person.

I read 'Lost in the hospital'. It's superb, as is all his poetry.

I'm glad you posted a poem about Aids. It's true that it's not mentioned much nowadays, but on the other hand I think maybe people automatically take care of themselves, at least the majority. It's the youngsters who start their sex life so very young that are in most danger. In my country the schools give lessons on protection and other issues, such as pregnancy, to pupils aged about 11 or 12. It must do some good...

Once again, congrats on your poem, Sergio.

Sylvia

[saore]

Thank you Sylvia. I am glad there is education in Argentina.

Sergio