Luck Is Luck is the first book of Perillo's poetry that I've read and her work is impressive. She has refined sense of voice and crispness that make every poem easy. Easiness can be good, it is also the one problem with her work.
Perillo covers all the standard topics of poets--nature meditations, coming-of-age experiences, aging and the death of family members. Many of these topics often lead to highly voiced and annoying poems but Perillo shows her skill by knowing just when to pull back and let the images mingle together themselves.
The first poem in the collection, "To My Big Nose," was thankfully not a sign of what was to come--it captured all the overblown "poet trying to sound like a poet" cliches (making analogies to gryphons and sphinxes, referencing other literary works, trying to make something banal very profound--are we supposed to laugh or take you seriously?). Thankfully these poems are only lightly peppered throughout the collection.
The first part of the book showcases a long set of poems about her growing up Catholic. The poems are from the perspective of a completely confused child perspective and wonderfully capture that voice. One poem, "The Cardinal's Nephews," really shines when she combines wonderful imagery with a keen tonality:
his strides filigreed with a little hiccup
every time he shucked the ballast of his Dingo boot.Mysterious and haunting lines like:
--think of Cesare Borgia
leading the cathedral's Christ Have Mercy
in a tin mask after syphilis wrecked his face.
These were the ghosts of men who stood at the altar
wearing spurs and daggers underneath their pleats.
and the final line phrases:
the uncle whose red cap
meant willingness to shed blood for the faith,
though at the time all I knew was its astonishing color.
This final line evokes such a powerful mystery that it draws the reader back into a second reading. The poem is about the long haunting of corruption in the shadow of the Church, but the haunting is in the images and Perillo is vibrant here.
The middle section of Luck Is Luck focuses on growing up and adolescence, particularly coming to terms with being a woman. The poems capture a kind of dark playfulness--particularly her series entitled "White Bird/Black Drop." Save for an excellent sonnet ("Given Unlimited Space, the Dead Expand Limitlessly") these poems droop into a very strong and characterless voice that is too self-aware, as if we are listening to the poet behind the curtain before the performance, as in "For the Pileated Woodpecker...":
So ta-dah. Here's the moment to which we've been brung--
but right off the bat, don't things get snarled.
The moment feels right, but I'm not sure about brung,
a folksy idiom to brush against the modern, which is our way,
Or in "Fubar":
For starters, scratch the woman weeping over the her dead cat--
sorry, but pet death barely puts the needle in the red zone.
The third section turns more serious, dealing with ghosts, aging, the death of her father and salmon. These poems try to approach the issue with reservation, but in doing so lose the wonderful image-montages that appear earlier in the collection.
Undoubtedly these are excellent, well-crafted poems and make for a good summer read. I think Perillo gives up some depth and complexity and plays her readers too easy, which is a let down to the readers. Often she tries to explain the meaning when she would do better to let the images rise to the surface and just mingle.
Categories: Poetry, Reviews
