Inseminating the Elephant

Inseminating the Elephant

"Perillo's poetic persona is funny, tough, bold, smart, and righteous. A spellbinding storyteller and a poet who makes the demands of the form seem as natural as a handshake, she pulls readers into the beat and whirl of her slyly devastating descriptions and observations before they can catch their breath...The fluid grace of Perillo's irresistible lines belies the tension inherent in their outlook, the resistance to easy emotion and obvious sentiment, the rejection of self-pity in favor of flinty humor and rigor. Sheer, shivery pleasure to read, Perillo's poems have extensive appeal."—Donna Seaman, Booklist "Perillo's time as a wildlife researcher gives her insight into the workings of a turtle's heart and blackbird behavior, while other topics range from Viagra and video games to Transcendentalism... These poems are tough and witty."— The New Yorker “Lucia Perillo’s poems cannot be ignored or forgotten... In imagery as startlingly original as Anne Sexton’s and in philosophical tone as harsh and courageous as Adrienne Rich’s, Perillo creates poems of great energy and power.”— Choice "Perillo is never uninteresting."— Publishers Weekly, starred review "Whoever told you poetry isn't for everyone hasn't read Lucia Perillo. She writes accessible, often funny poems that border on the profane... Perillo is always after something deeper than mere self-deprecation: if not transcendence, then a kind of knowledge that only comes the hard way... f you're seeking levity in the face of life's hardships, Perillo's poems can show you how to find it."— Time Out New York Lucia Perillo’s hard-edged yet vulnerable poems attempt to reconcile the comic impulse—the humorous deflection of anxiety—with the complications and tragedies of living in a mortal, fragile “meat cage.” Perillo’s surgical honesty—and biting, nourishing humor—chronicle human failings, sexuality, and the collision of nature with the manufactured world. Whether recalling her former career as a naturalist experimenting on white rats or watching birds from her wheelchair, she draws the reader into unforgettable places rich in image and story. Don’t look up, because the ceiling is suffering some serious violations of the electrical code, the whole chaotic kelplike mess about to shower us with flames . . . Here, take a seat on these rickety risers inside my head, though your life isn’t mine, still, I have hope for your hearing the gist of this refrain about how glad he is that he’s not dead. MacArthur Fellow Lucia Perillo is the author of four books of poetry that have won the Norma Farber First Book Award, the Kate Tufts Prize, the Balcones Prize, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her critically acclaimed memoir, I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature , was published in 2007. The opening pages of this exceptional volume, with an epigraph from Chekhov (“Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out”) and acknowledgment of the doctors who care for the author (she writes frankly about being wheelchair-bound, owing to multiple sclerosis), might suggest something sentimental. In fact, these poems are tough and witty; Perillo’s time as a wildlife researcher gives her insight into the workings of a turtle’s heart and blackbird behavior, while other topics range from Viagra and video games to Transcendentalism. “One of these days I’m going to get myself an avatar,” she writes, “so I can ride an archaeopteryx in cyberspace— / goodbye, the meat cage.” Perillo is also capable of tenderness, writing of her father’s work overseeing bricklayers, or, in a poem about ex-lovers, her “absent children’s nondepletion of the ozone layer.” Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker Balancing on the axis between the absurd and the transcendent, MacArthur fellow Perillo counters the clinical extremes of science with earthy irreverence in her latest collection of wry, over-the-speed-limit poems. With forays into wildlife management and medical time served, what with her multiple sclerosis, Perillo writes with empathy and sneaky wit about the sacrificial animals in lab studies. Facing gore and death without puking is a rite of passage, but a steady forensic gaze does not preclude compassion or wild humor. Perillo offers a crazy ode to Girl Scouts singing on their knees, an erotic view of an elephant, and a cathartic wallop of an answer to Auden in “Rebuttal,” in which her contemplation of Brueghel is rudely interrupted. Memories of shoplifting meat in college open into musings on hunger and hubris, while an ad for Viagra sparks thoughts of Niagara and the urge to ride its torrent: “doesn’t part of us want to be broken to bits? / After all, our bodies are what cage us.” Yes, but poetry as wise and effervescent as Perillo’s sets us free. --Donna Seaman "Perillo's poems cannot be ignored or forgotten In imagery as startlingly original as Anne Sexton's and in a philosophical tone as harsh a