Diva Author:Rafael Campo, Federico Garcia Lorca A major new work from one of Americas most acclaimed younger poets, Rafael Campos Diva appears at the intersection of confession and confinement, hyperbole and humility. In his masterful third collection, Campo explores further the epic themes of his Cuban heritage and Americas newness, his work as a doctor caring for AIDS patients and his ident... more »ity as a gay man. At once relishing and resisting the poetic traditions of formal English verse, Diva showcases Campo moving deftly between received forms and free verse. In each poem the sound of words is transformed into the highest of arts, the act of performance into the exercise of power, and the most profound abjection into the sweet promise of divinity. Culminating with his new and daring translations of Federico Garca Lorcas sonetosthe great Spanish poets most homoerotically explicit and formally accomplished poemsCampos music instills in the reader an exalted understanding of beauty, suffering, and, ultimately, the human capacity for empathy. Rafael Campos rhymes and iambs construct their music against the edgy, recognizable world his poems inhabit: the landscape of birth and of dying, sorrow and sex, shame and brave human persistencefirst and last things, center stage in these large-hearted, open, deeply felt poems.Mark Doty, author of Sweet Machine I know of no poet writing today with more courage and compassion than Rafael Campo. Like the practicing physician that he is, Campo writes poems that heal artfullyor honestly face the impossibility of healing. Here we find sonnets for the damned, songs for the dying, the insistence on empathy for a prostitute with AIDS on a Boston street corner. There is the unforgiving squint of a mother rejecting her gay son. Yet there is a soaring lyricism in these poems, epiphany and redemption, a celebration of bloodstained, stubborn life as it bursts forth. The poems of Rafael Campo inspire that sharp breath of recognition. He has all my gratitude and admiration.Martn Espada, author of Imagine the Angels of Bread« less