“Again, the Body”
Lucia Perillo Find the poem here A few days ago I was left suckerpunched upon searching online for a poem by Lucia Perillo only to find her obituary. She died on October the 16 after having lived with Multiple Sclerosis for over thirty years. My teacher offered me to change poets so that I could stay with the theme of living poets; however, I refused. Many of Perillo’s poems were influenced by her disease and many relate back to death and issues with our bodies. I felt that abandoning Perillo would be synonymous with saying that all her poems and thoughts on death were wrong. Although she is no longer alive, Perillo’s poems and ideas live on, and that is enough reason to keep analyzing. Perillo’s poem “Again, the Body” epitomizes her common theme of struggling to accept our bodies and is haunting when read so shortly after her death. The poem’s opening lines are “when you spend many hours in a room alone you have more than the usual chances to disgust yourself.” This idea shows that we are the greatest critics of our own bodies. We do not need the opinions nor help of others to find everything wrong with our bodies; it is almost second nature and something that we do automatically. Perillo follows up on this with writing that the main problem of the body is “not that it is moral but that it is mortifying.” Death is a given and something that we should not worry about, but as we continue to live the body somehow manages to shame us when in reality we should be embracing it. We sometimes manage to do both things at the same time just as the narrator does when she speaks of “scratching off the juicy scab” and biting “a thick hangnail.” The mention of the hangnail causes Perillo to change the direction of the poem. She starts to write about Schneebaum, a man who lived in the Peruvian jungles with the Harakmbut people who happen to be cannibals. This tribe is referred by their “kindness,” which is interesting. When I think of a cannibal, I assume him to be very violent and ravenous, which is not the case in this situation. There is a play on words (which I assume was purposeful) as Perillo writes, “who would have thought that cannibals would be so tender?” At first I saw this as the cannibals being friendly and understanding, but I see the level on which it could be tender in the sense of easily chewed. As Perillo “chewed too far and bled” with her hangnail she says that the taste was almost satisfying. This combines her own chewing with cannibalism, linking two seemingly disgusting activities into something normal. She repeats an earlier thought with “how difficult to be in a body, how easy to be repelled by it.” Life is so complex and staying alive is not always easy, yet we take our bodies for granted and cannot help but become disgusting by them. It makes me think of Perillo’s struggle with Multiple Sclerosis and how difficult it was to accept her own limitations and not become frustrated with the disease. Rest in peace, Lucia Perillo, and thank you for the wonderful poems -Steven
3 Comments
Scami
11/4/2016 07:07:48 am
is letizises even a word?
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mallory
11/4/2016 07:32:29 am
I really liked how you gave background on the author. It helped me understand what the poem was saying and why she wrote it.
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Steven
11/4/2016 07:49:52 am
yes
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