Rafael Campo

Aids and the Poetry of Healing

"Now you were tired, and yet not tired enough

—Still hungry for the great world you were losing   

Steadily in no season of your choosing—

And when at last the whole death was assured,   

Drugs having failed, and when you had endured   

Two weeks of an abominable constraint,   

You faced it equably, without complaint,   

Unwhimpering, but not at peace with it.   

You’d lived as if your time was infinite" (Thom Gunn, Lament).

 

 

"No matter how much I fortify, however AIDS seems to demand that I suffer too" (95).
Even though one is building strength and prove to not only everyone else but themselves too they are strong, AIDS pulls them back demanding one to suffer. It is an incurable virus many suffer from.

"Religion still implies AIDS is a punishment, meted out by an unloving, unforgiving and unimaginable God, intent with wrath" (95).
This is a dehumanizing statement. This statement says one is deserving of an illness and should expect the worst to happen. Religion plays a large role on people's lives and it is hurtful to say God is unforgiving and his intent with wrath.

 

    "So I am grateful for the poetry that is written about AIDS, in that it has helped me so generously to  locate myself in a world irrevocably altered by the presence of the virus" (95).
    This is proof that poetry written about AIDS has helped locate them as a person and helps the recovery process of staying positive.

    "Now, when I see SILENCE = DEATH painted on the sidewalk, or pinned to the lapel of my white coat, immediately I know what that means. It means our words are keeping us alive" (99).
    Words play a larger role on ones life. Words can mean keeping us alive proving poetry in general plays a large role on healing someone.

    "I have lost myself the same way in the faces, the bodies, and the poems of people with AIDS. I see them teaching us, each one of us, the meaning of our own losses. Teaching us that every word is true" (100).
    Poetry can teach us the meaning of our losses. It teaches us that every word has meaning and they play a larger role on our lives.

Stitches A Memoir By David Small

Quotes through Page 156:

"The mere moving of her fork a half-inch to the right spelled dread at the dinner table" (16).

"And it was dad the radiologist who gave me the many x-rays that were supposed to cure my sinus problems" (21).

"I thought it must be her hair that gave Alice the magic ability to travel to a land of talking animals, singing flowers, and dancing teapots, I wanted to go there immediately" (56). 

"Your mother has asked me to speak to you about something we both feel is important" (150).

Quotes 157-325

"That night, back in my hospital room, I was surprised by a visit from my mother" (170).

"Even among my old friends I felt invisible, a shadow flickering around the edges of every event" (213).

"At home, late at night, I began to have the sensation that I was shrinking down... and living inside my own mouth" (216). 

"After that awkward moment, while my own emotions ricocheted between extremes of betrayal and foolishness, anger and confusion, what stayed with me for the longest time was the look mother gave me, itself full of complex feelings, few of which, I'd guess, had much to do with me" (273).

"I gave you cancer" (287).

"Although my parents talked seriously about get a divorce, they never did" (301).

"She couldn't talk and neither could I. I had been screaming for so many hours that I, too, was voiceless" (306).

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