Madness, Rack, and Honey by 
From the New World by 
The Earth Avails by
The anticipated new book by Mark Wunderlich, whose poetry "reminds us how fully the spirit can illuminate the depths" (The New Yorker) APublishers WeeklyBook of the Week With your sorghum broom you sweetened my path, pulled the woolen shawl around me while I slept. That the lightning struck the willow and did not fall—for this I am grateful. —from "Heaven-Letter" The Earth Avails evokes an all-but-lost history, when every setting, thought, and action was imbued with ritual: here's the prayer said in a time of sickness; here's the blessing spoken upon entering the house; here's the letter from heaven that protects its holder from harm and misfortune. Rendered in part from folkloric and historical sources, Mark Wunderlich's poems reinvent these traditions with lyrical and emotive force for a new century of readers.
On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths by
Honored as one of the "100 Notable Books of 2012" byThe New York Times Book Review "The poems inOn the Spectrum of Possible Deaths are taut, lucid, lyric, filled with complex emotional reflection while avoiding the usual difficulties of highbrow poetry."--New York Times Book Review "Perillo has long lived with, and written about, her struggle with debilitating multiple sclerosis. Her bracing sixth book of poems, published concurrently with her debut story collection, takes an unflinching, though not unsmiling, look at mortality. Perillo has a penchant for dark humor, for jokes that stick."--Publishers Weekly, starred review "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."--Booklist "Whoever told you poetry isn't for everyone hasn't read Lucia Perillo. She writes accessible, often funny poems that border on the profane."--Time Out New York "Lucia Perillo's much lauded writing has been consistently fine--with its deep, fearless intelligence; its dark and delicious wit; its skillful lyricism; and its refreshingly cool but no less embracing humanity." --Open Books: A Poem Emporium The poetry of Lucia Perillo is fierce, tragicomic, and contrarian, with subjects ranging from coyotes and Scotch broom to local elections and family history. Formally braided, Perillo gathers strands of the mythic and mundane, of media and daily life, as she faces the treachery of illness and draws readers into poems rich in image and story. When you spend many hours alone in a room you have more than the usual chances to disgust yourself-- this is the problem of the body, not that it is mortal but that it is mortifying. When we were young they taught us do not touch it, but who can keep from touching it, from scratching off the juicy scab? Today I bit a thick hangnail and thought of Schneebaum, who walked four days into the jungle and stayed for the kindness of the tribe-- who would have thought that cannibals would be so tender? Lucia Perillo'sInseminating the Elephant (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and received the Bobbitt award from the Library of Congress. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Inseminating the Elephant by
"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 offlinty 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 FellowLucia 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 New Testament by 
The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems by 
If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? by 
Trances of the Blast by 
