The Body Mutinies

by Perillo, Lucia Maria

• ISBN13: 9781557530837
• ISBN10: 1557530831
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-05-01
• Publisher: Purdue Univ Pr

Summary

In poems that are at once colloquial and elegant, Perillo strives to bridge the gap between the exuberant voice of the streets and the rarefied voice of literary tradition. Using the long lines and narrative style that have been identified with some of the finest male poets of our times, Perillo tells the stories of female experience with a grim eye for the comic and an ear turned to language's highest pitch.

Author Biography

Lucia Perillo teaches at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Table of Contents

How Western Underwear Came to Japan	p. 3
Skin	p. 4
Inseminator Man	p. 6
Durable Goods	p. 9
The Life Opaque	p. 10
Lost Innocence of the Potato Givers	p. 11
The Professor Wonders If His Daughter Will Understand Tragedy	p. 14
Tripe	p. 15
On the Sunken Fish Processor Tenyo Maru	p. 16
At Saint Placid's	p. 19
Chekhov's Cruelty, Chekhov's Grace	p. 20
Death Gets a Chair	p. 22
On a Streetcorner in Merida	p. 27
The Roots of Pessimism in Model Rocketry, the Fallacy of Its Premise	p. 29
The Body Mutinies	p. 30
Retablo with Multiple Selerosis and Saints	p. 31
Flesh Tooth House	p. 35
Elephant	p. 36
Kilned	p. 38
From the Occupied Zone	p. 39
Women Who Sleep on Stones	p. 40
On Belay	p. 41
Thinking about Illness after Reading about Tennessee Fainting Goats	p. 42
Compulsory Travel	p. 45
The Tone	p. 47
Rutter's Field	p. 49
Limits	p. 51
July 4, 1966	p. 56
Old Story	p. 58
Needles	p. 60
Autumn, 1939	p. 64
The Double Issue	p. 65
Three Zen Poems with My Mother and Crows	p. 67
Monorail	p. 68
"What One Loves Are Things That Fade"	p. 71
For My Washer and Dryer	p. 72
The Marshall Street Poster of Marilyn Monroe	p. 75
Archaeology of the Bed	p. 77
Black Girls	p. 78
On the Female Serial Killers	p. 79
Barbie Tells Her Biography	p. 81
An Amplified Gesture	p. 83
Annunciation at a Foreign Film	p. 84
Dressage	p. 86
Cairn for Future Travel	p. 87
The Body Rising	p. 88
Notes	p. 91
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