The Enemy

In his fifth collection of poetry, the award-winning writer and physician Rafael Campo considers what it means to be the enemy in America today. Using the empathetic medium of a poetry grounded in the sentient physical body we all share, he writes of a country endlessly at war--not only against so-called evildoers abroad but also with its own troubled conscience. Yet whether he is addressing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the battle against the AIDS pandemic, or the "culture wars" surrounding the issues of feminism and gay marriage, Campo's compelling poems affirm the notion that from even the most bitter of conflicts arises hope. That hope--expressed here in the Cuban exile's dream of someday returning to his homeland, in a dying IV drug user's wish for humane medical treatment, in a downcast housewife's desire to express herself meaningfully through art--is that somehow we can be better than ourselves. Through a kaleidoscopic lens of poetic forms, Campo reveals this greatest of human aspirations as the one sustaining us all. --Publisher's description.