Praise for the poetry of Lucia Perillo
"I have two words for anyone who wants to know why people turn to poetry in times of need: Lucia
Perillo. She's the funniest poet writing today, which is saying a lot, since she's also the poet most concerned with the treachery
practiced on us daily by our best friends and worst enemies, our bodies. . . . [Luck Is Luck offers] one exquisitely
wrought poem after another."
-- David Kirby, The New York Times Book Review
“Luck Is Luck contains Lucia Perillo’s most adventurous poems on subjects as various as original
sin and life with an oversize nose. It is a delight to wander with her into strange imaginative territories. Always, I read
her poems with surprise and (write it!) jealousy.”
–Billy Collins
“Lucia
Perillo’s poems are dazzling tragicomedies of everyday life, buoyant with wit, feeling, and delight in language. She
can make a 1950s housecoat seem as exotic as a farthingale, and a rain-soaked paperback swell till it contains the world.
It’s hard to imagine the reader who can resist the playful energies and serious charm of Luck Is Luck.”
–Katha Pollitt
“The energy, decisiveness, and humane wisdom of Lucia Perillo’s
work are tonic. She is an exhilarating poet.”
–Jonathan Galassi
“Breathtaking and bold in its range of reference and feeling . . . full of energy yet with an eye for the holy
and serene.”
–Lorrie Moore
“Engaging and elegant . . . [Perillo’s]
ironies are carefully honed. . . . [Her] directness is distinctly refreshing.”
–Los Angeles
Times (The Best Poetry of 1999)
“[Perillo] is a genuinely expert teller of anecdotes,
with a slightly dizzying ability to weave narrative and self-expression, and wonderful powers of description.”
–Chicago Tribune
“No subject, it seems is too mundane or too exotic for Perillo’s
engaging poems.”
–The New Yorker
