The Country We Live In

This intriguing collection dares to challenge the accepted notions claimed by our poetic grandfathers about nature. In Perry's poetic country, the landscape is "separate from the self"--not as Wordsworth would lament--that we cause such a separation--but that nature attempts to "keep us outside." When Whitman meditates on blades of grass, the hieroglyphics are "uniform," but Perry's contemplative effort to translate these same objects results in the assertion that the creator is a "mad calligrapher." Many borders are reconfigured in such a way that it is difficult to "tell the wind from the rain" or "the rain and the sizzling eggs." This mutable vision extends to the borders of a self. The poet asks, "do you dare yourself to trade places/with the people inside"? Clearly Perry dares because no attempt by the reader to construct the history of a single speaker is possible. These poems have a mind of their own (or should I say minds) which is deeply observant, sensitive to the nuances of the country around us, and incisive. This is a book to take outside with a cup of tea and drink in all of its sensual and mindful pleasures.

Kay Murphy, Author of The Autopsy and Belief Blues