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Open Books: Event Archive
April 27, 2005 07:30 PM
LUCIA PERILLO
A scan of the contents page of Luck Is Luck, Ms. Perillo's
just-published volume, hints at the wry, unvarnished tone of the poems
within -- "To My Big Nose," "Fizz Ed," "Poem Without Breasts," "The Crows
Start Demanding Royalties." But this is tricky, skillful poetry that laces
the light with the deeply dark, the personal with the human -- that is,
animal -- condition. "Maybe beauty is medicine quivering on the spoon / but
surely you have noticed -- the goat painted on the famous old Greek urn / is
headed to the slaughter." Unflinching poems indeed, about death,
diminishment, and disappointment, yet they are devoid of bitterness or
despair, and filled with a true joy -- "Who doesn't have at least one pair
of wax wings out in the garage?"
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