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Primate Behavior: Poems
Once in a generation a young poet arrives with such an unexpected and compelling vision that readers take notice right from the start. With Primate Behavior Sarah Lindsay makes just such a debut. Her exuberant, witty, and outrageous poems have already stunned and delighted the readers of some of America's best magazines and journals. Primate Behavior is the product of a wild and exhilarating imagination, ranging wide across an abundant imaginary landscape. Sarah Lindsay writes of space migration and the cave paintings of 35,000 B.C. Her poems speak from the perspective of an embalmed mummy and detail the adventures of nineteenth century explorers. Lindsay investigates the world as no one has yet had the daring and inspiration to do, reanimating history and folk legend and setting in motion curious new worlds that speak eccentrically, but unmistakably, to their own. Primate Behavior is a remarkably sustained and self-assured performance. The Grove Press Poetry Series, which has brought the public both powerful retrospectives and the work of authors in mid-career, now introduces an exciting new poet, Sarah Lindsay. "Sarah Lindsay's molten imagination burns new channels for poetry. No lie." - Kay Ryan; "As a poet, Sarah Lindsay is fearless. Subjects others would find unpromising or intimidating she forms into poems of eerie, spectral beauty. Antarctic exploration, astronomical theory, the lungfish, the manatee, and the rotting orange-even Superman's puberty!-all are transmuted from strange Idea into graceful Song. Primate Behavior is a must read." - Fred Chappell.
- GenresPoetry
112 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
2 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Lindsay
225 books13 followersBorn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1958, the poet Sarah Lindsay works as a copy editor and proofreader in Greensboro, North Carolina. She is the author of Primate Behavior (Grove Press Poetry Series, 1997) which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Mount Clutter (Grove Press Poetry Series, 2002); and Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008). A graduate of St. Olaf College and the UNC-Greensboro MFA program in creative writing, she apprenticed for a few years at Unicorn Press, learning to set type, print and bind books by hand. She plays the cello with friends in a quartet that is sometimes a trio or quintet, and lives with her husband and small dog among toppling piles of books. In 2009, Sarah received the M. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood prize from the Poetry Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 9, 2024
Sarah Lindsay looks like she could be my Mother’s sister. Her primitive voice and behaviors in this collection spit and love, tells the origins of forgotten landscapes or the ones who tread there long ago.
The Circus Merk section did not grab my attention and seemed to trickle into section three.
Favorites:
-So Were the Animals
-Voladora
-What All It Takes
-Neanderthal
-They Live Here
-Tornado Watch
-Solipsist in Love
-Fossil Finds
-Primitive Behavior
The Circus Merk section did not grab my attention and seemed to trickle into section three.
Favorites:
-So Were the Animals
-Voladora
-What All It Takes
-Neanderthal
-They Live Here
-Tornado Watch
-Solipsist in Love
-Fossil Finds
-Primitive Behavior
January 25, 2008
Queen of the quirky factoid, real or imagined. This is poetry that astonishes. Lindsay can be intimidating at times--I definitely had a dictionary on hand, as I read. But, ultimately, she's worth the extra effort. She has, what Nabokov lauded as, “the precision of the artist, the passion of the scientist.” My favorite work of hers, "Twigs & Knucklebones," will be coming out sometime next year from Copper Canyon Press. Keep an eye out for it--and tell me if you would like to formally join the Sarah Lindsay cult (I'll be taking applications)!!!!
July 22, 2024
Near Combe d’Arc
goat with no mouth bird without eyes
line, a horse back horse, its head concealed
horse with shoulder muscle of swollen rock.
black pigment, dried spit.
here on the floor a dish to burn animal fat,
a mound of colored earth another
crawl, slither, stagger, wade this bronchial maze
sobbing in its old air your boots too flat
on floors rounded like palms of bare feet
through shapeless passages seven stomachs of rooms
and see by raised flashlight the goat the bird
blown onto the wall from his mouth and his and his
but they were not trying to tell us anything
nor are they now all they knew they knew so well
they lived in the cave of it deeper than we can follow.
listen till your ears break and hear only
the cave’s breath all one intake exhale
or is it the blood in your temples
they never saw their own faces only their hands
the voices in their heads did not speak our tongues
of neurosis and hurry horse voice they could still hear
with the ink expelled from their lips bison, panther
perhaps not yet so faint as to be holy
bear voice bear fat’s guttering light
they never saw the black-limbed animals
cease to move in an unwavering torch
like yours low orange now, a dead sun, gone.
you have been thinking too long. so guess
at their knowledge that the goat the bird
the horses are here in this entire dark.
goat with no mouth bird without eyes
line, a horse back horse, its head concealed
horse with shoulder muscle of swollen rock.
black pigment, dried spit.
here on the floor a dish to burn animal fat,
a mound of colored earth another
crawl, slither, stagger, wade this bronchial maze
sobbing in its old air your boots too flat
on floors rounded like palms of bare feet
through shapeless passages seven stomachs of rooms
and see by raised flashlight the goat the bird
blown onto the wall from his mouth and his and his
but they were not trying to tell us anything
nor are they now all they knew they knew so well
they lived in the cave of it deeper than we can follow.
listen till your ears break and hear only
the cave’s breath all one intake exhale
or is it the blood in your temples
they never saw their own faces only their hands
the voices in their heads did not speak our tongues
of neurosis and hurry horse voice they could still hear
with the ink expelled from their lips bison, panther
perhaps not yet so faint as to be holy
bear voice bear fat’s guttering light
they never saw the black-limbed animals
cease to move in an unwavering torch
like yours low orange now, a dead sun, gone.
you have been thinking too long. so guess
at their knowledge that the goat the bird
the horses are here in this entire dark.
April 5, 2021
Primate Behavior is a wonderful sojourn into Sarah Lindsayʼs mind, where no egocentricism had been enabled only to make poetry quintessential to the reader. She was courageous to alter a past not her own, conjure characters which she supposed couldnʼt claim as her own, yet, in the art of the lyric, her words presented something that is rarely seen, and that is an alternative world where there is no trace of white confession and American sentimentality.
These poems are not easy to penetrate; but then again, the collection as a whole must not only be commended, but recommended for aspiring poets and cold hand-scholars for its imaginative feat. Rare are the poems which are not confessional—which is mostly an American product. The surge of an individual validation across the page made poetry silopsistic, limited, and at times, inevitably generic. Though Yeats was right that poetry is an argument to one self—past his prime, poets of the West were never much inspired to incite the muse of imagination, and rather, fruitlessly, relied from their melancholies—metaphors and symbolism had seen no more in art of the verse because of such futile egocentricism. Whether it is fictional, if not, Lindsay was scientific enough in procuring necessary details for her poems which presented those alternative stories, it is without a doubt sheʼs a major success; even if American confessional poets had hid her in the shadows—underrated, and almost unnamed.
These poems are not easy to penetrate; but then again, the collection as a whole must not only be commended, but recommended for aspiring poets and cold hand-scholars for its imaginative feat. Rare are the poems which are not confessional—which is mostly an American product. The surge of an individual validation across the page made poetry silopsistic, limited, and at times, inevitably generic. Though Yeats was right that poetry is an argument to one self—past his prime, poets of the West were never much inspired to incite the muse of imagination, and rather, fruitlessly, relied from their melancholies—metaphors and symbolism had seen no more in art of the verse because of such futile egocentricism. Whether it is fictional, if not, Lindsay was scientific enough in procuring necessary details for her poems which presented those alternative stories, it is without a doubt sheʼs a major success; even if American confessional poets had hid her in the shadows—underrated, and almost unnamed.
June 24, 2017
I read this book all the time. I love it more each reading.
July 21, 2009
Sarah Lindsay is unique. She imagines the lives, moment by moment, of all the creatures of the world - and she seems to get it right! Philosopher Thomas Nagel once asked "What's It Like to be a Bat?" He couldn't imagine, and explained why. Lindsay can imagine, and in a way the reader can lend himself to. She offers us a detailed construction of those parts of the world around us which we have forgotten or neglected.
This is her first published book of poetry and it's dynamite! She brings her observations to life in startlingly original language. Same for Mount Clutter, her second book, and Twigs & Knucklebones, her third and most recent. A short sample _
Small Moth
She's slicing ripe white peaches
into the Tony the Tiger bowl
and dropping slivers for the dog
poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall
when she spots it, camouflaged
a glimmer and then full on -
happiness, plashing blunt soft wings
inside her as if it wants
to escape again.
This is her first published book of poetry and it's dynamite! She brings her observations to life in startlingly original language. Same for Mount Clutter, her second book, and Twigs & Knucklebones, her third and most recent. A short sample _
Small Moth
She's slicing ripe white peaches
into the Tony the Tiger bowl
and dropping slivers for the dog
poised vibrating by her foot to stop their fall
when she spots it, camouflaged
a glimmer and then full on -
happiness, plashing blunt soft wings
inside her as if it wants
to escape again.
April 1, 2008
A beautifully written book of poems that made me feel very stupid.
The language is astounding, but overall, refused to engage my heart as well as my mind.
I loved "Of What Earth Has Eaten, Something May Yet Be Found," and "Cheese Penguin."
The language is astounding, but overall, refused to engage my heart as well as my mind.
I loved "Of What Earth Has Eaten, Something May Yet Be Found," and "Cheese Penguin."
September 23, 2012
I wish I were a smarter person. I would have enjoyed these poems more. I did like the way Lindsay crossed back and forth over the borders between humans and animals. She didn't anthropomorphize. She merely reminded us of our origins and of our real place in the kingdom.
February 17, 2008
Her poetry is wonderful.
October 12, 2009
Mom asked,
those times I wouldn't eat my peas,
or sneaked away from the dishes to watch TV,
What makes you so special?
Meant, I suppose, to deny it,
I never did. And still say, I don't know.
those times I wouldn't eat my peas,
or sneaked away from the dishes to watch TV,
What makes you so special?
Meant, I suppose, to deny it,
I never did. And still say, I don't know.
March 10, 2011
This was one of the 1998 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...
July 5, 2014
This book is a great read!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews