Inseminating the Elephant

In Inseminating the Elephant—winner of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress, the 2010 Washington State Book Award, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—MacArthur Fellow Lucia Perillo dissects human failings and sexuality with deft precision. These uncompromising yet vulnerable poems strive to reconcile the comic impulse with the complications and tragedies of physical frailty, the ever-diverging world of nature and civilization, sex, aging, and the humbling effects of pain. Each line is threaded with honesty and vigor: “I roam these rooms lit by twilight’s bulb, / feeling half like Bette Davis in a wheelchair / and half like that Hell’s Angels kingpin with the tracheotomy.” Writing with vulnerability, wit, and compassion, Perillo evokes an austere dignity in this magnificent collection.