Poetry 365

This month for Poetry 365 we’re highlighting the latest collection from experimental poetry pioneer Michael Palmer.  Author of 21 volumes and winner of the 2006 Wallace Stevens Award, Palmer is often associated with Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and the Language Poetry movement.  In Thread, he presents 86 new poems structured in two parts and frequently linked in stunning suites that reintroduce the Master of Shadows from 2005’s acclaimed Company of Moths.  Lyrical, visceral, and surreal, Thread offers wry meditations on mortality and war that feature “fresh images and experimental language that will haunt readers’ minds long after they’ve stopped reading.”  So check out this excellent intro to the avant-garde, sample a poem below, and make sure to stop back next month for Poetry 365.

The Classical Study

I asked the Master of Shadows

wherefore and wherefrom

                    .

but he said that art was short

and life was long.

     .

Said: let us praise

those flames that consume the day

                        .

stone by stone

and the lilac by the barn

                .

and the hours when you were young

and the mother- and the father-tongue.

          .

Curled by fire the leaves of grass,

buckled, the roof beam,

                                    .

shattered, the wagon’s haft,

ash-flecks in the wind’s swell.

             .

Have you forgotten the whistling of the stones,

the heave and shift of the windrows?

                                    .

So I asked the Master of Shadows

about the above and the below,

              .

the this and the that,

the first and the last,

          .

but he said,

I am no master

                               .

only a shadow,

and he laughed.

.

Russell J. (Readers’ Services)

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