The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry

Rafael Campo, the author of The Other Man Was Me and What the Body Told, is both a doctor and an important contemporary poet. In The Desire to Heal, he uses his gift for language to delineate and explicate the connections between his two vocations, writing and healing, and his roles as a gay man and an educator. Campo's topic is always the body; he understands its fragility and resistance, its power and grace. His prose is precise and poetic, and his insights are revelations. The Desire to Heal is a work of literary grace and compassion--a memoir that illuminates the world with new light and urgency.