Primate Behavior

September 29, 1997
Had Dr. Dolittle fathered a prodigious daughter, she might well be behind the bizarre and entertaining personae found on the pages of Lindsay's first-book bestiary. For example, consider the odd precocity of the narrator in "Manatee in Honey": "I thought I might die of foolishness at last/ being fed every time I opened my mouth, my lashes/ held beautifully shut by pure molasses,// and a smile on all my lips that wouldn't go." Or the two sets of Siamese twins, one entranced by the sight of a giraffe--"Chang thinks, If everyone looked that strange/ we'd still be selling duck eggs. Eng:/ If everyone looked like that but us,/ they'd pay to see our short necks"--while the other pair join the circus and become pregnant. Lindsay's voice is impersonal and intelligent, fantastical and yet firmly grounded in world history, zoology and--since she is also a cellist--classical music. Focused on freakiness, most directly in the section Circus Merk, Lindsay's dark-edged, sometimes creepy poems are also imbued with a buoying sense of respect--for the different, the unexpected and the challenging. The evolutionary unlikelihoods presented in such poems as "Cheese Penguin" and "Toby the Sapient Pig" provoke a far deeper response than surprise.