Congratulations on your book. I hadn’t seen any of your poetry before, so I used the link to your website and just read the excerpt posted there from your poem, "Madame L Describes the Siege of Paris."
I'm just curious about your source and your inspiration. I was especially struck by the fact that the speaker in your poem is at the zoo, because, in fact, the Parisians ate their zoo during the siege of Paris. Not the zoo in its entirety, I understand, as nobody wanted to eat certain animals; but much of the talk in Paris during the winter of 1870-71 seems to have been devoted to speculation regarding how the elephants, Castor and Pollux, would taste – and like subjects. That information gives your last sentence, “To know/ that you can take the heart and eat it raw” an added resonance, and I wonder if it’s intended.
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