Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl

Diane Seuss's brilliant follow-up to Four-Legged Girl, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for PoetryStill life with stack of bills phone cord cig butt and freezer-burned DreamsicleStill life with Easter Bunny twenty caged minks and rusty meat grinderStill life with whiskey wooden leg two potpies and a dead parakeetStill life with pork rinds pickled peppers and the Book of RevelationStill life with feeding tube oxygen half-eaten raspberry ZingerStill life with convenience store pecking order shotgun blast to the face—from "American Still Lives"Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl takes its title from Rembrandt's painting, a dark emblem of femininity, violence, and the viewer's own troubled gaze. In Diane Seuss's new collection, the notion of the still life is shattered and Rembrandt's painting is presented across the book in pieces—details that hide more than they reveal until they're assembled into...