Active Boundaries: Selected Essays and Talks

by Michael Palmer

A poet’s prosebook, a hymn to the art of the word, here is Palmer’s first collection of essays and talks A lifetime engagement with poetry radiates from every page of this distinguished collection of essays and talks that span forty years of a poet’s life.  Active Boundaries  by Michael Palmer offers readers an intimate glimpse into the poetry behind the poetry that, as Robert Creeley once noted, “makes possible a place where words initially engage their meanings―as if missing the edge of all ’creations,’ of all ’worlds.’” With philosophical grace and conversational ease, Palmer unearths a vanguardist tradition in poetry that permeates languages and cultures, centuries and histories. He investigates an “active boundary” as it relates to a sense of form as well as, Palmer writes, “to a more social sense of poetic activity as it exists in the margins, along the borders and, so to speak, ’underground.’” Meditations on poets such as George Oppen, Paul Celan, Octavio Paz, Shelley, and Dante rise to the forefront among a multitude of other voices, like those of Trinh Minh-ha, Anna Akhmatova, Toru Takemitsu, and Susan Howe. Diaristic entries about his mother on her death bed are interspersed with epiphanic fragments; “Within a Timeless Moment of Barbaric Thought” confronts poetry’s relation to memory, war, the War on Terror, contingency, and experience. Pulsing through the heart-lines of  Active Boundaries  is poetry’s renewal.

Genres: Criticism

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2008

About the author

Michael Palmer is a poet associated with the Language Poetry movement; he is also a translator and has worked on art with painters and dancers.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot to chew on here. Here's just one sample:

“Poetry seems often a talking to self as well as other as well as self as other, a simultaneity that recognizes the elusive multiplicity of what is called ‘identity.’”

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays/talks/introductions running the gamut from the Objectivists to experimental poetry to the idea of narrator to the art of Irving Petlin. Not light reading by any means, but an excellent portrait of the mind of someone who has been lucky enough to spend his life thinking about art and writing. Notable also by its reverse chronology, with the first talk written in 2007 and the last in 1980, and fascinating to see the focus and succinctness of the first few loosen as the writing gets older and the writer gets younger. Put me on my intellectual ass, but, as Sarah put it, "That's why you read books of essays by obscure experimental poets." And it's true.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of essays and talks is very reminiscent of Palmer's poetry. Throughout the book, Objectivism, biography, experimental poetry, and even a piece of writing akin to a journal is explored. The book is heavily intellectual, calling on many contemporary names as well as more ancient ones, and requires absolute attention. The essays and talks are similar to his poetry in the way that they can approach any subject from seemingly anywhere. He will often describe some historical or biographical nuance or a piece of writing and then follow up with terse conjecture. For examples, "Oppen declared himself an antinomian, thus placing himself within a rich American tradition of resistance and refusual." The first part of the sentence is simply a statement taken from Oppen, followed by Palmer's grandiose statement which he goes on to talk about in the rest of the paragraph from his keynote address, "Take the X Train: A Discrete Series: For Oppen."