2012 was quite a year for Lucia Perillo. Her first collection of short stories, Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain, was published by W. W. Norton and selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of the year. Her sixth collection of poetry, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths, from Copper Canyon Press, …
It surprises me how many of our customers in the store talk fondly about their e-readers, some even producing them so that I might see how wonderful they are. My somewhat theatrical revulsion and thorough unwillingness to touch the critters surprises them. And there we stand, looking at each other across quite a divide. It …
“Who’s your favorite poet?” she asked almost as soon as she entered the bookstore, and I could feel my grimace forming. I hope I stifled it before she noticed. Please understand, I don’t mean to be critical of the several folks each year who ask that question. In fact, I think I understand the impulse …
In the great Preston Sturges movie, The Lady Eve, a dowager turns to the late-arriving dinner guest as he slips in next to her and proclaims “The fish was a poem!” in perfect high-haughty English. Sometimes it does seem that anything called a poem is a poem. My happy task here is to offer three …
