CONTACT TRACER/VIRUS DIARY

A debut collection focuses on a historical moment in the field of public health as seen through an operative on the front lines.

As Barber explains in a preface, he worked for nearly three decades as a disease intervention specialist for the Rhode Island Department of Health, first in the STD unit and then in the HIV/AIDS Division, a move reflected in the hybrid title. He also carefully points out that the works presented here refer to the epidemic’s earlier days, when many considered a positive HIV result to be a death sentence. This collection of 67 short pieces features free verse, prose, and a unique combination of the two as the author witnessed a wide swath of humanity struggling at the intersection of surprise, shame, anger, and recrimination. The first lines of the opening poem, “A Stranger Knocks,” immediately capture the interplay between mistrust and necessity in this delicate dance: “And the stand-off begins of trying / to get more information than give.” In “Gotta Dance,” at the end of the first section, readers familiar with the history of HIV/AIDS will surmise that the purplish lesions Barber notices on a patient’s face were most likely Kaposi’s sarcoma. Thus, the poem’s placement and content mark the dawn of a new public health crisis, which altered and sharpened the author’s duties, raising the stakes even higher. While the majority of the pieces focus on his patients—their surroundings and reactions—at times the author considers how this profession takes a toll on his own psyche, instilling an overwhelming sense of guilt. In “Mission of Devastation,” one of the book’s most powerful poems, he likens himself to “a B-17 over Hamburg” during World War II. After upending lives, he had the privilege of retreating to relative safety, which he characterizes as “the / comforts of Thai food, a book, a booth.” Still, amid all of this sorrow, Barber and some of his patients were able to find mordant humor under difficult circumstances, a gift for everyone involved, including readers. But in “Darkness Visible,” the author closes on a somber, futile note, invoking the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.” Here he reflects on the totality of his work “that most of the time leaves me feeling somewhere / between / a messenger boy and Father McKenzie. / Nobody saved.”

A poetic, poignant rendering of one of the most difficult jobs on the planet.