Body Mutinies

by Lucia Perillo

The poems in The Body Mutinies bring speech to those accomplishments of the body that are most often relegated to silence, though in Perillo’s usage “accomplishments” may include illness, death, and certainly sex. Her textual landscape includes rock climbers and the ill, female killers who take to the road and women who survive by climbing out of burning buildings, even though in the process they’re forced to let modesty fly to the wind. 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.

Genres: Poetry

91 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Lucia Perillo published five books of poetry. Perillo graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1979 with a major in wildlife management and subsequently worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She completed her M.A. in English at Syracuse University, and taught at Saint Martin's College, and in the creative writing program at Southern Illinois University. Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Kenyon Review. Luck Is Luck was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and won the Kingsley Tufts Prize. A former MacArthur fellow, Perillo lived in Olympia, Washington with her husband.

Reviews

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time, when I fancied myself a poet and my undergraduate life was consumed by creative writing classes and editing journals, my very first creative writing professor (where, o where are you now, Jon Marshall?) recommended I read The Body Mutinies. I forget the particular reason why he recommended it, other than mentioning how Perillo writes about developing MS, but finally reading this now, it does ring true with my late teens, early twenties self. I have to say I liked this collection more for the ideas and overall images it invoked--I especially like the poems exploring youth and femininity--than the language itself. Favorites:
-"Durable Goods"
-"The Life Opaque"
-"Lost Innocence of the Potato Givers"
-"On the Sunken Fish Processor Tenyo Maru"
-"The Professor Wonders If His Daughter Will Understand Tragedy"
-"The Roots of Pessimism in Model Rocketry, The Fallacy of Its Premise"
-"Retablo with Multiple Sclerosis and Saints"
-"Elephant" (wildly jealous she saw Raymond Carver read)
-"July 4, 1966"
-"Needles"
-"For My Washer and Dryer"
-"Archaeolgy of the Bed"
-"On the Female Serial Killers"
-"Barbie Tells Her Biography"

********

Counting as my volume of poetry for the Read Harder challenge.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amazon is usually better at recommending books to me...this is definitely not my cup of tea. Although beautiful, I don't like "filler" and there just seemed to be so much extra, unnecessary in her poems. Nothing jumped out and grabbed me, nor did it make me want to re-read a one.

[Poetry.Shaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like I always do, I did a bit of research on the author before diving into this gorgeous piece of work and was surprised to read the author of the collection had recently died in 2016--likely to complications with multiple sclerosis which has a major influence on many of the poems in The Body Mutinies. A majority of the poems in this book cover themes of physical pain and freedom as the author examines the bodies limitations and triumphs. My favorites of the collection mixed the alliterative sounds of assonance and consonance with personal reflection and vivid imagery to create some truly special poems. Overall, this collection is one I think about regularly as I try to imitate or use some of the authors construction images with sound patterns, as I found the movement of her poems to be masterfully written.

Things I liked~
*The narrative of the book felt more full and realized after learning about the poet's own struggles with pain and the body as it deteriorates. Even so, many of the poems that had to do with pain were so much more than just pain. The author uses complex, repeating images as well as humor to give the poems more dynamic and layered meaning.
*Though most of the poems are free verse I absolutely adored the poems that had more structure. The sonnet--"Thinking About Illness" (42)--is one of the best poems I've read all year and I will never forget just how masterfully done the sonnet is. Like... I'm in love.
*I personally consider it a crime if readers do not take the time to read this collection aloud. It is meant to be heard because the melody and music in this collection is superb.

Some things that could be better~
*I honestly cannot think of anything.

Overall - 5/5 (I am looking forward to going through the book a second time.)

[unnarrator · Rating 3 out of 5]

What Perillo does in this book, she does really really well. I laffed, I got grossed out, I was convicted in my own complicity.

But...but...(but one cannot always go on saying "but"...) BUT, it was all very square (lots of "how" and "the way"), though from within that squareness she executes these moves which are truly no doubt very productively shocking to her readership—talks about genitals and dead bodies and uses words like jism, etc. Her diction sets are hilarious and charming, her free-verse formal skills unerring. But...but...but...I read it in forty minutes and just think, Is that all? Is that all there is? And don't remember feeling this way about her newer stuff.

I can't help feeling that language has bigger game out there for us to skin and fry up. The Duende and the Professoressa say, poems are for the rest of us too, you know; poems are for people. This is a very Nicanor Parra idea with which I cannot disagree. And yet...okay, I guess I'm just forever going to trail off when confronted with this aesthetic quandary so enough with this "review" and let's just say, four stars for what it is, two stars for what it's not, which isn't fair at all, but then who said life was fair. Anyway it was a perfect read for a rainy lonely Sunday menstrual morning.

(PS, plus she gets an extra half-star somewhere in there for using epigraphs from Stoppard, Berryman ("Rilke was a jerk") and one of the Brujo's favorite lines from Flannery O'Connor: "She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.")

(PPS and this part of the Purdue blurbery kit is just GODAWFUL, and I know Perillo probably finds it so, too: "Using the long lines and narrative style that have been identified with some of the finest male poets of our times..." OH RETCHIFY.)

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with this book today.

The poems range from the personal to the political. Some are confessional in the purest sense ("Limits"). All are politically charged. She speaks of the politics of violence, the politics of gender and the intertwining of both.

The language is forceful at times, quietly academic at others.

Just a beautiful collection - full of anger and knowledge.

[Keelyn Healy · Rating 3 out of 5]

smart, precise.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to love Lucia Perillo's poems - they issue from a place of honesty and precision few achieve.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good. Lots of longish poems, which take me longer to process. Need to read entire collection again.

[Jonterri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the long poems entrancing in this collection and the most intriguing and memorable. "For My Washer and Dryer" resonates with me even though I'm moving on to the next book.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poetry of observation, mixed between literary and non-literary poems.