Lives of the Animals

By Robert Wrigley

Book Overview

Lives of the Animals takes us to that place where the boundaries between predator and prey, the observer and the observed, merge, reverse, become re-imagined. We find ourselves inside a story of death and life, witness to acts of survival so primal they seem less instinctive than passionate. And it is passion that most informs these poems: the bond between lovers, between parent and child, between humans and other animals, both wild and domestic, that populate our shared world of hunger and need.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014200345X
• ISBN13: 9780142003459
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

His Best Yet

What I love most of all about Wrigley's poems is the language. It's always beautiful, no matter what he writes about--a near-sighted woman's breathing on a mirror becomes "a sleepy moth of breath"; the pile of viscera left from a killed deer's cleaning reveals "the sleek, degreening pancreas." And the poet's exceptional ear and amazing eye always illuminate something deep and even profound about being a human being. Read the poem in this book called "Do You Love Me?," in which a man overhears his little girl talking to her dog. It's touching, yes, but it's also really haunting. That's the other beautiful thing about Wrigley's poems: they stay with you. You can't forget them. You don't ever want to.