The Promises of Glass [Paperback]

Michael Palmer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2001

The Promises of Glass, Michael Palmer's first new collection since At Passages (1995), is now available as a paperback. In seven sections this gorgeous book explores language and the "salt sea of autobiographies." His work also examines what Marjorie Perloff has described as "the absurdist 'displacement by degrees' one experiences in the post-urban wold of late twentieth-century America."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Palmer's obliquities, resonant mysteries and near approaches to sense have latterly made him one of the poets young, smart aesthetes admire and imitate. This 17th book of poems (following 1998's selected, The Lion Bridge) continues Palmer's familiar and ambitious programs: each of its seven sequences deftly interweaves hints of narrative, bits of landscape description, philosophical proof-lets, personal asides and meditations on why and how we try to represent people, ideas and art. Real people and citiesAthe poet Max Jacob; "you, Jane, and you, Bill"; ParisAjostle Palmer's trademark personages and placesA"the Hypnotist to the Stars," "Quod the Metaphrast," "the Lake of Lost Souls or Last Songs." The title sequence begins with a few poems reprinted from Palmer's At Passages, then finds new frames for the old questions of epistemology and ontologyA"Are you bearing an alphabet/ among the rats in your hold"; "Our time is a between time; best to stay out of it." A short sequence responds to work by the British figurative painter R.B. Kitaj, bringing Palmer as close as he has ever come to directly mimetic description. More than anything else, the poems contemplate the process of contemplation in order to come up with symbols for making symbols: "I became a painter of paintings briefly/ then I eliminated paint." A professional choreographer, Palmer seems to pick up many ideas from dance, and also from the French and Italian contemporary poets he has translated, and from Wittgenstein (on whom his aphorisms can seem parasitic). But Palmer has as many ways of evading "prose sense" as others have of making it. If this collection marks no large-scale departure, his writing is as good here as it has ever beenAsometimes faux-intellectual and self-indulgent, but often superbly strange, sharply provocative, full of slippery acoustic pleasures. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

One of America's most important poets...startlingly lyrical and visceral. -- Harvard Review

Palmer is one of the most important poets in terms of...political or aesthetic implications. -- Leonard Schwartz, Poetry Project Newsletter, December 2004/January 2005

Palmer's poetry is mysterious and some of the most revealing we have. -- Bloomsbury Review, July/August 2001

The poems are expansive landcapes that explore...a dizzying array of visual and imaginative modes of perception. -- Free Verse, Michael Dowdy, 1 May 2005

[C]onfirms [Palmer's] ability to speak ...'at a distance from oneself and yet with the greatest passion.' -- Andrew Zawacki, Boston Review, April/May 2001

[M]aps a multifaceted and ever-shifting constellation of infinitesimal, unconnected dots. -- American Book Review, Krysia Jopek, March-April 2001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (May 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811214796
• ISBN-13: 978-0811214797
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,795,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great fun great depth, April 30, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: The Promises of Glass (Paperback)

Michael Palmer, one of the most influential poets of his generation, continues his trademark of meticulous experimentation here. Such a range of language is in this book. He's one of the poets I recommend most highly for any poetry reader, & this book is very exciting for its slow, deliberate, essentially unique clip.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ravishing, February 1, 2006

By 

apples - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Promises of Glass (Paperback)

What a great book. Tremendous sonic intensity. These poems dig down into meaningful spaces without losing their opacity. The poems are at once elegant, playful, cocky, and sly. The writing here has a kind of intellectual generosity--the poems respect the reader's imagination.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As much what remains..., April 22, 2000

By 

crumbcake (Rhinebeck, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Promises of Glass (Hardcover)

Michael Palmer has crossed the wide ocean of language through its treacherous currents and eddying whirpools he has brought news from the far country, news of the possibility of meaning, of knowledge, even, I imagine, of salvation.

But as in the hero's mythological quest, the poet in search of these lights must submerge himself in the dark wood of the space-without-meaning, the denial of knowing, the dangerous hinges language turns on, the arbitrary construction of meaning in service of politics.

Reading a Michael Palmer poem is like suddenly realizing has wandered into traffic, or unfamiliar territory: language poetry in rhyming couplets, a poem that begins as collage but suddenly "degrades" into narrative, a fragmented work that against its own chaotic urges suddenly coheres. They are wards against the dark, entreaties to light, they are mantras, yogic chants, magic spells, they are the ancient underground exposing themselves in service of human progress.

This new book continues the progression of his work in bold and dangerous directions.