Marvelous,
the body’s workmanship, how perfect is
its service to the soul it shelters, each
soft hair along the shin enshrining touch,
this way we’re made to need each other’s care.~ Rafael Campo, Physician-Poet
Today Rafael Campo is a primary-care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a professor at Harvard Medical School, and author of seven books of poetry. He says describes poetry as “a wonderful factory for empathy.” He runs circles for close poetry reading, discussion, and writing that create community and understanding whether it is a circle of doctors or a support group of patients. He even brings poetry into his medical practice, sometimes slipping a poem into a patient’s hands.
“One thing I see universally is how it breaks down the isolation that people feel in the experience of illness. As soon as that first poem gets read aloud, there is a sense of intense community, a shared experience of voice. And in that, there is a potential for healing.”
~ Rafael Campo
Beyond “curing” disease, he brings “healing” to make his patients whole so they can go on in the face of chronic ailments that range from cancer to HIV. In a world of science and research divorced from emotions, the physician-poet also finds his place as a healer to rekindle empathy, connection, and meaning among other doctors. “Literature and Medicine” became a movement in medical schools to bring literature to medical training as a way to awaken empathy and understanding. “Narrative Medicine” is another movement that struggles to awaken empathy in the practice of medicine by shifting focus from just the disease to the patient as a whole body, mind, emotion, and spirit. With all these movements to bring empathy back into medicine, sometimes the answer can be as simple as a poem.
Hospice Rounds
One looks at me as from a distance.
Another does not cry; “It’s only pain,”
she says, as if cancer were just a nuisance
one looks at square, from a distance.
Outside the window, sunshine, like persistence.
Yet how Bach from the radio seems like rain.
She looks at me. From this great distance
I’m another who cannot cry. Or feel pain.
Read more about Rafael Campo in the May-June 2019 edition of Harvard Magazine, “The Physician-Poet: Rafael Campo’s compassionate care” by Lydialyle Gibson.