What's Written on the Body

by Peter Pereira

“It’s rare in contemporary poetry to find a book as boldly celebratory as Peter Pereira’s new collection.”—Chase Twichell In What’s Written on the Body, physician Peter Pereira explores the body, medicine, wordplay, gardening, family, and domestic gay life, often drawing from his experience as a community clinic doctor in Seattle. An avid Scrabble player, anagrammer, and cruciverbalist, Pereira opens the collection with a delightful selection of wordplay poems, as a counterpoint to poems recounting the day-to-day practice of a family physician, from suturing a wound in the ER to extracting an eraser from a child’s nose. From “Body Talk”: Do you hear how the scalp claps?
How the heart contains the earth, yet
is also a hater? How saliva
is lava, while testicles sit elect
for their slice test . . . Peter Pereira is a family physician in Seattle, where he cares for an urban, underserved population of immigrants, refugees, housing project residents, and the elderly. His first book won the Hayden Carruth Award, and his individual poems have appeared in a wide range of publications, including Poetry, USA Weekend, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read poetry by nurses, but outside of William Carlos Williams, I don't think that I have read a lot of verse by a doctor, so I was pleased to find Peter Pereira's book, What's Written on the Body. Pereira doesn't dedicate his whole book to the world of medicine -- he has some wonderful poems about wordplay and nature -- but my favorite poems are the stories taken right out of the hospital. In Pereira's words, people are more than mere patients, sickness is more than just something that needs to be cured, wounds are more than cuts waiting for stitches. This collection is Pereira's third book -- I'm on the lookout for his first two.

[Inverted · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s an admirable earnestness in these poems, one that brings to mind James L. White's sense of quietude, with the expected humdrum of everyday and/or domestic life lifted by clever wordplay and astute observations. Some of the wordplay are more apparent (and also brings to mind another work, an earlier one from Harriett Mullen), as in the linguistic flips and tricks in the Anagrammer section:

I ask him to open his shirt.
How our lives evolve and revolve.
If eros is a form of erosion, then
I'm feeling a little ob(li)vious tonight.
Like someone who talks with both hands.
(from Tête-à-tête)

Fascinating that the eros here is resolved purely through language; consumation a necessary conclusion that transpires only as allusion. Can't help but feel it's the sign of the times, but also how 15 years ago already feels like an epoch when it comes to queer poetry, if only for the sheer number of mainstream(-ish?) poets that unabashedly transcribe the erotic.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this book is found in New Madrid. I think there's a web link.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first section of this book is a selection of anagrammers-poems that play on words-and they are very well done. Pereira is a family physician and many of his poems draw from his work in medicine.

[Julene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when it first came out, also went to Peter's reading at Open Books. The reading was packed because he is a local celebrity. I enjoyed his reading.

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. I am not a big lover of poetry anyway and it didn't rhyme. I just didn't get it.