Lucia Perillo

A collection of short stories that takes place in the Pacific Northwest includes odd characters like an addict who becomes obsessed with vacuum cleaners and a suburban housewife who commits armed robberies.

In Inseminating the Elephant, MacArthur Fellow Lucia Perillo delivers hard-edged yet vulnerable poems that attempt to reconcile the comic impulse with the complications and tragedies of living in the actual, eating-and-breathing body--what she calls the "meat cage." With deft precision, Perillo dissects human failings and sexuality, as well as the relentless collision of nature with the manufactured world. Whether recalling her training as a biologist...