Lucia Perillo (1958–2016)

Although Lucia Perillo’s sixth collection of poems offers little comfort to the optimistic, if you’ve ever been crippled by choice in a department store or experienced an existential crisis reading the comments section of a website, there is some catharsis to be found in these pages. These poems perfectly capture the pervasive unease of life under late capitalism. In “My Father Kept the TV On,” she laments the “…green republic where the pilgrims came to land!” and proclaims, show more “If I’m going to choose my nostalgia it is a no-brainer/that I’m going to side with books, with the days/before the lithium-ion battery…”

Perillo imagines suburban denizens “swaying to the music of cash registers in the distance” and shares the sensation of manufactured majesty induced by a visit to a home improvement superstore: “You know/you should feel like Walt Whitman, celebrating/everything, but instead you feel like Pope Julius II/commanding Michelangelo to carve forty statues for his tomb.”

In these poems, the Earth, however neglected, still manages to be both beautiful and terrifying, “glowing so lit-up’dly” from space where one cannot see the junk that fills our oceans and our homes, where far below we are “Queasy from our spinning but still holding on,/with no idea we are so brightly shining.” show less

Inseminating the Elephant by Lucia Perillo

I suspect this stunning collection of poems often catches readers unaware. Perillo ranges widely (and sometimes wildly) in her choice of subject matter, using irony tinged with humor to carry us along.

It's strange to find an ode to shoplifting, but here it is, in 'A Romance.' And 'First Epistle of Lucia to Her Old Boyfriends' similarly gives readers a pause (reflect: how close our own sentiments?) Perillo evokes 'Martha,' the last of millions of show more passenger pigeons who died in 1914 to 'wonder what else could go.' (And I recall Marguerite Young's depiction of that event.)

The title poem appears late in the book. Even if we have seen
the author's acknowledgements that include thanks to her doctors and to 'the inmates at the Washington (state) Corrections Center for Women, who trained my dog' we are caught by
'now I've alluded to my body that grows ever more inert-- better not overdo lest you get scared: the sorrowing world is way too big.'

Perillo is wheelchair bound but her mind, heart and pen seem to know no limits. This is a stimulating selection of poems and a true gift to its readers. show less

"On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths" is an amazing book of poetry, at once both beautiful and devastating. Perillo focuses her poems on chronic illness, living with death, and her knowledge as a naturalist, but she never completely abandons emotion for science. Her poems have so many levels I'm sure I haven't plumbed the depths. Worthy of reading, re-reading, and re-reading again.

I liked these, especially the linked stories about two adult sisters, one developmentally disabled. There is a great sense of time and place. Perillo writes esp well about how women deal with memories of their younger selves. The title story is very different from the rest in the collection, more impressionistic and fantastic,with a stunning ending drawing on Perillo's background in wildlife management.