Remembering Jane Lunin Perel (by Peter Johnson)

 

My dear friend and fellow poet Jane Lunin Perel passed on February 22, 2024, which just happened to be my birthday. When I got the call, trying to deal with a multiple shitty emotions, I instead looked above and said, “Janey, couldn’t you have waited a week?”

Some of you may find such gallows humor inappropriate, but Jane would have loved it. Jane and I often joked that the one thing Irish Catholics (me) and Jews (her) share is a dark sense of humor.

Jane came to the prose poem late and took little time to master it, as the below prose poem and commentary suggest. I could let it rip now and use all of the those hyperbolic words (“brilliant,” “insightful,” “glorious, “groundbreaking,” and so on—all those words that I hope people don’t use at my funeral services (unless they throw in “sexy”), but if I were to go overboard with praise, Jane would be the first to say, “Cut the crap, Peej. Will you just drop the fancy words and feature my work.” For, like most of us poets, her “work” was a huge part of who she was, though it always came second to family and friends.

So I’d like you to meet Carnelia, Jane’s alter ego and heroine of her, O what the hell, “brilliant” and “groundbreaking” collection, Red Radio Heart, which you can purchase at this link. Red Radio Heart

I will miss you, Jane. The world has lost a beautiful, talented, and wonderfully idiosyncratic soul, but, hopefully, this little tribute will help to keep your spirit alive.

Jane Lunin Perel

RED RADIO HEART

Carnelia is tired of her heart. It’s too heavy. When she tries to sleep it bumps, then races. She pictures it, disentangling itself from the system that feeds it, then shrinking, escaping out of her mouth, rolling down the street. Sticky candy apple heart. Road kill heart. She could have a pig’s heart. Or a red radio heart that would play jazz for her but not Bartok. Her heart in a yellow basket that Ella Fitzgerald has lost. Maybe Frankenstein will stagger out from behind the billboard that supports the war. He’ll need a new heart, too. Maybe he’ll scoop up hers and she’ll be free of her clumsy overripe blood orange heart. Meanwhile, the generals beef up attacks.