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The Body is No Machine
Poetry.
- GenresPoetry
86 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2007
173 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Perrine
8 books80 followersJennifer Perrine is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Beautiful Outlaw (Kelsey Street Press, 2025), winner of the QTBIPOC Book Prize. Perrine's other books include Again; No Confession, No Mass, winner of the 2016 Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry; In the Human Zoo, recipient of the 2010 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize; and The Body Is No Machine, winner of the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon.
For more information, visit www.jenniferperrine.org or follow Jennifer on Instagram at @JenniferPerrineWrites .
For more information, visit www.jenniferperrine.org or follow Jennifer on Instagram at @JenniferPerrineWrites .
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 30, 2017
As often happens, I read a poem on line that I loved so much that I wrote to the author AND bought this book. The poem was “I Tell Death, Eventually” in/on Rattle (http://www.rattle.com/i-tell-death-ev...). That poem demonstrates the accessible style of poetry that I most often enjoy. This collection was much more erudite, at least in vocabulary. I found it a bit off-putting to stop in almost every poem and consult my iPad for a definition. Normally, that would be the kiss of death for Perrine’s book in my opinion, yet you see I still gave it five stars. Why? Because of number of poems I marked as favorites in the Contents.
These poems cover a broad range of topics about bodies from a mother (what we do to her body and how she affects our self-body image), illness, death, surgeries, an absorbed twin, lovers, etc. What I most appreciated were Perrine’s insights on gender (she teaches gender studies). She introduces us to people unlike ourselves in some ways, but shows how much we have in common. Her poems also evoke the wry, often dark humor employed in the Rattle poem, as in “In Honor of Your Birthday, I’ve Been Mauled by a Dog.”
The second poem (dictionary free) shows why I kept reading on and on to the end:
“…and when I’m born, though she gives me a name
plain and utile as toothpaste, she insists
on calling me Magpie: and how she’s right:
when I’m first caught filling my cavernous
maw with paint chips, plaster, coffee grounds pulled
from the trash, my father assures her:
this is the work of all infants: to hold
the world inside them, piece by piece: to turn
each sliver about on the tongue…”
I loved everything about this poem: “from plain and utile as toothpaste” to using “maw” with Magpie, how her dad stood up for her, how her mother doesn't remember she was once a child, and especially the explanation of “the work of all infants.”
These poems cover a broad range of topics about bodies from a mother (what we do to her body and how she affects our self-body image), illness, death, surgeries, an absorbed twin, lovers, etc. What I most appreciated were Perrine’s insights on gender (she teaches gender studies). She introduces us to people unlike ourselves in some ways, but shows how much we have in common. Her poems also evoke the wry, often dark humor employed in the Rattle poem, as in “In Honor of Your Birthday, I’ve Been Mauled by a Dog.”
The second poem (dictionary free) shows why I kept reading on and on to the end:
“…and when I’m born, though she gives me a name
plain and utile as toothpaste, she insists
on calling me Magpie: and how she’s right:
when I’m first caught filling my cavernous
maw with paint chips, plaster, coffee grounds pulled
from the trash, my father assures her:
this is the work of all infants: to hold
the world inside them, piece by piece: to turn
each sliver about on the tongue…”
I loved everything about this poem: “from plain and utile as toothpaste” to using “maw” with Magpie, how her dad stood up for her, how her mother doesn't remember she was once a child, and especially the explanation of “the work of all infants.”
October 27, 2018
Insightful and fascinating
April 12, 2008
Today I read Jennifer Perrine's The Body is No Machine. (Well, all but two poems that I couldn't finish, too squicky.)
Only the title poem uses machine imagery, metaphor, conceit, synecdoche, anything to talk about the body. No other poem. Startling and impressive.
She had some wondrous sound in some of the poems. (She taught me that rhyme without meter is nearly wasted because the ear needs the beat to anticipate the sound/closure.)
I loved all the biological metaphor; it's educated and I appreciate that. I loved:
"how change always begins, time and song enough"
from "Brood X". I love how "Gender Question #2: Butch, Femme, Androgynous, or All Over the Map?" says something real and concrete and today (in a way that I can't write).
In "Coda, Codex, Codon" I loved all her alliteration, I loved, too, the mayflies.
I loved "Coveting, with Pronunciation Guide" which begins:
"And what if I said your breasts rise
like an umlaut over the o of your stomach?"
I am not always clear why they are all poems (that's my own struggle) but they are all good.
Only the title poem uses machine imagery, metaphor, conceit, synecdoche, anything to talk about the body. No other poem. Startling and impressive.
She had some wondrous sound in some of the poems. (She taught me that rhyme without meter is nearly wasted because the ear needs the beat to anticipate the sound/closure.)
I loved all the biological metaphor; it's educated and I appreciate that. I loved:
"how change always begins, time and song enough"
from "Brood X". I love how "Gender Question #2: Butch, Femme, Androgynous, or All Over the Map?" says something real and concrete and today (in a way that I can't write).
In "Coda, Codex, Codon" I loved all her alliteration, I loved, too, the mayflies.
I loved "Coveting, with Pronunciation Guide" which begins:
"And what if I said your breasts rise
like an umlaut over the o of your stomach?"
I am not always clear why they are all poems (that's my own struggle) but they are all good.
April 4, 2016
Disclosure: I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
Sometimes I think poems can be read too quickly to understand them fully. The title of this collection is The Body Is No Machine, but these poems need to be well oiled(i.e. read). A slow digest is needed.
A lot of her language and images are wonderful. For example:
"this is the work of all infants: to hold // the world inside them, piece by piece: to turn / each sliver about on the tongue: a shape // in a tangram: a code the child's mouth cracks." (from "Pica" p. 11)
"I love the sound of her slow cud // movement" (from "I'm in Love with a Tooth Grinder" p.22)
"You said my skin tasted // only of salt, but I say it's the whirr / and buzz of a moth trapped between window // and screen." (from "Because You Have No Sense of Smell" p. 25)
"Bodies filled the earth in her / dream, their breath tilling // the soil that stretched red / and wet with the river / that ran from her garden." (from "Genesis: On the Seventh Day" p. 75)
I enjoyed this debut collection of poems. I look forward to devouring more of this emerging poet's body of work. And thanks to the poet for the handwritten note sent with the book.
March 21, 2010
this book is dope. she wraps the body in such tight, lyrical language.
also, this is my fav. poem of hers, which isn't in the book, but as soon as i saw this poem i knew i needed to go out and buy the book:
If Life Gives You Lemons, Make
your mouth into a trough, a spout
from which that sour sauce will pour,
pulp and spittle swimming down your
chin, eyes pinched shut, each acid thought
welling under the tongue. Thin slice
of pain wedged on the salty rim
of your face, let its tart grace skim
your glass neat: no sugar, no ice
to temper this bite, this slick burst
that cankers your lips. Life gives you
lemons: cut your teeth on their rinds,
tear them with gusto, slake your thirst
with their slavering, jaundiced juice,
swallow hard, leave no seeds behind.
JENNIFER PERRINE
found the poem on poems.com where it won the taste 'test.
also, this is my fav. poem of hers, which isn't in the book, but as soon as i saw this poem i knew i needed to go out and buy the book:
If Life Gives You Lemons, Make
your mouth into a trough, a spout
from which that sour sauce will pour,
pulp and spittle swimming down your
chin, eyes pinched shut, each acid thought
welling under the tongue. Thin slice
of pain wedged on the salty rim
of your face, let its tart grace skim
your glass neat: no sugar, no ice
to temper this bite, this slick burst
that cankers your lips. Life gives you
lemons: cut your teeth on their rinds,
tear them with gusto, slake your thirst
with their slavering, jaundiced juice,
swallow hard, leave no seeds behind.
JENNIFER PERRINE
found the poem on poems.com where it won the taste 'test.
April 15, 2014
I got to see Perrine read two poems this weekend, and she blew me away--blew me away enough for me to buy this book, which is filled with poems that reveal a chimeric persona in the struggles of becoming (the way we all struggle with becoming). In poems that are smart and formally engaging (free verse poems, concrete poems (i.e., "Corset"), sonnets...), and also filled with the emotions of doubt and love and ecstasy, Perrine shows her understanding that poetry is an art of the dialectic: head and heart; form and content; faith and doubt.
November 24, 2008
What I most admire in this book is the warmth and tenderness available in a poem like "Because You Have No Sense of Smell." I believe in and trust this speaker, so that when I find the ambiguous peace proposed in a poem like "Genesis: The Seventh Day," the effect is all the more halting.
April 13, 2017
My favorite poem in this lovely collection is "For D., After Three Months on Testosterone," which poet Jennifer Perrine wrote in response to a friend's gender transition. The opening lines capture the mixed emotions I experienced when my partner, Ben, transitioned:
"When you sent me that clip
of your voice, I cried. Stupid, I admit
to mourn half an octave,
to elegize vibration..."
There is both grief and guilt in these lines. When Ben started transitioning some fifteen years ago, I first felt mostly grief (and, yes, I'm sorry to say, fear and anger). Over time, I felt more and more joy, first on his behalf and then for both us--and then for a world in which such transformation is possible. Yet I also felt guilty that I wasn't feeling ONLY joy. The opening lines of this poem poem portray this guilt. They remind me that change--even necessary and beautiful change--can provoke both grief and joy. The poem blesses mixed emotions.
"When you sent me that clip
of your voice, I cried. Stupid, I admit
to mourn half an octave,
to elegize vibration..."
There is both grief and guilt in these lines. When Ben started transitioning some fifteen years ago, I first felt mostly grief (and, yes, I'm sorry to say, fear and anger). Over time, I felt more and more joy, first on his behalf and then for both us--and then for a world in which such transformation is possible. Yet I also felt guilty that I wasn't feeling ONLY joy. The opening lines of this poem poem portray this guilt. They remind me that change--even necessary and beautiful change--can provoke both grief and joy. The poem blesses mixed emotions.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews