Animal Library: New Writers Series

The Animal Library marks the debut of a remarkable poet o a poet of the flesh, his own and that of the animals he has lived with all his life, whether real or imaginary. Jason Camlotis father was a furrier and he grew up in a world where, inevitably, ibaby fur gets in your eyesi or in iyour mouth.i In dreams, the poet becomes a whale corpse iwashed up/ on a very pale beach/ and hundreds of flies came, / and people, / to see the tusk, / spun like coral glass.i And as the boy grows up, images, at once curiously literal and yet surreal o images of being devoured or skinned alive o stay with him. The beauty of this collection is one of the mot juste, a concreteness and precision, coupled with a superb sense of rhythm.

o Marjorie Perloff

Critical Comment

i...Camlotis graphic exactness adds to the power of his vivid, animated images.i

o Betty Goodwin

i...Camlotis style is rich and telling, taking us from smutty Chicago to ancient Greece, from the 19th century Decadents to modern biological polemics.i

o Hour, 2001