The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 [Paperback]

Michael Palmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

The Lion Bridge, Selected Poems 1972-1995 offers for the first time a comprehensive view of Michael Palmer's extraordinary poetry. Dense and haunting, analytic and lyrical, classical and profoundly avant-garde, Palmer's work has a matchless beauty, difficult to describe: as Common Knowledge remarked, "Even more than its music, it emanates silence." The poet himself has culled the 118 poems of The Lion Bridge from his great body of work. This generous chronological selection includes individual poems, selections from serial poems, and two complete serial poems. Together the poems form a bridge, a kind of work-biography which takes a long look at an extraordinary achievement and gives a new view of a body of work as the poet himself wishes it to be seen. It also rescues from limbo so much material that has gone out of print. The Lion Bridge presents work from seven of his books: Blake's Newton, The Circular Gates, Without Music, Notes for Echo Lake, First Figure, Sun, and At Passages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Palmer has long and rightly been considered the most lyrical, and the most aurally accomplished, among poets in the experimental tradition of Louis Zukofsky and Gertrude Stein; this selection spanning his career restores to print much of his influential work from the 1980s. Palmer traffics in paradoxical series of statements that challenge the limits of meaning: "the false sky has never been this blue." He invents semi-characters like "Brother Mouse with his parachute in mid-air"; conjures places called "Passages" and "Desire"; and unrolls meta-recursive titles: "Here the poem is called Theory of the Real, its name is Let's Call This, and its name is called A Wooden Stick. It goes yes-yes, no-no." Palmer (who is also a choreographer), seeks to substitute analytical, dancelike pleasures for the description and mimesis we expect from older poetry. His best poems highlight comic, vivid imagesA"our word-balloon, you will note, is slowly/ rising over the parched city" and interrupt themselves with human cries: "Each evening there's a poppy in my brain/ which closes before dawn/ Whatever happened then will not happen again/ Please move my arm." Palmer is sometimes classed with the West Coast's language poets, but his European influences, his delightful poems for children and his sometime mysticism render that label insufficient. His best work, for all its abstracted puzzles, has something to show anyone who wants to know where poetry might go next, or where its fringes have been.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Is he a Language poet? Palmer is as rigorously inventive as his Language peers, but the personal and political lurk here, too. His polished surfaces and linguistic experiments can be daunting, but this comprehensive collection of his work gives readers a way to approach them, revealing just how innovative he can be.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing; First edition. edition (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213838
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213837
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,347,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars irreplaceable avant-garde modern poet, March 28, 2003

By 

I X Key "burningfield" (tomorrow) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (Paperback)

Michael Palmer's poetry is so unique, & always unsparingly brilliant. This might be the most important book of his career, since it collects so much essential poetry he wrote over such a long period of time, such a major proportion of his life. He's done a lot more different things in his poetry since this book, & in the time span this selection covers. But this book is so important to get to know Michael Palmer, & what he's done to 20th & 21st century poetry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Palmer is brilliant, July 18, 2004

By 

Kyle S. (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (Paperback)

As something of a freelance poet, Michael Palmer is someone I've turned to for inspiration. I don't know any pseudo-intellectual words to describe it, but his manipulation of words and ability to touch people with even really abstract work astounds me. He moves me. For an example of some of the brilliant work in this collection, try looking at "The Sun" online. (...)

P.S. Who is the moron that copied and pasted rave reviews but didn't star them? It really deflated the score.