The Promises of Glass

by Michael Palmer

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."

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

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

[Jay Paine · Rating 5 out of 5]

In these delightfully illogical, visually aware, and philosophically unprofound poems, the language and ideas of the mid-to-late 20th century decay into a paradoxical humor that surprises the reader with its geometrical and poetic patternings, some of which give rise to shockingly cohesive narratives & a reckoning with the atrocities & aftermath of WWII.

This collection is also a testament to how that which is not is far more interesting than that which is. While Palmer’s poetry “is not a picture not a thing it is not a picture of a thing” (In an X), the experience of reading the collection often feels like looking at blurry, under-developed film negatives, which invite the reader to speculate & fill in gaps or grapple with its vaguenesses & ambiguities.

While I quite admire the Autobiography series for its thematic range (the poems range from humorous to horrific), my favorite of the collection is “In an X,” which masterfully riffs on the style & content Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, turning & turning its philosophical content until it digresses into a meditation on the discomfort of being human (the speaker states, “My body as a diagram of the body the body of another”) before fragmenting into individual words & eerie repetitions: “do / not / weep / Hamnet / do / not / wait” (numbers removed).

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Palmer's gift elliptical diction and contrast really pops in this collection. Palmer does seem to dream in philosophy: rarified diction and abstract reflection often gets concretized and paired with his memory fragments. He has a way of making alienation and impossibility of art--in this case photography--not only appealing but somehow welcoming. This is a solid collection, even the easy poems made difficult at the end.

[Mackenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a Palmer fan because of this book- it's how I discovered him. I love him for his syntax. Forceful and constantly in a spiral. Good stuff.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

A top ten poetry book for me. A humbling experience.

[Hannah Seidlitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

what unprecedented prosodic delight!

[Hannah Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Palmer takes the echo of thought and builds it to its most intense form, only to discard it and have you wonder what it ever meant to begin with. “São Paulo Sighs”, boy DOES it.

[Matthew Hittinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Michael Palmer read back when I was studying at Michigan. Perhaps I wasn't ready for him then (that happens, that writers speak to you at different points in your life, even certain books speak to you differently when you read them again at another time, in another space, at another place in your life). At that time I couldn't get into him, but now, I just read Company of Moths and was like, wait, this is quite good--that first section "Stone" made me read and reread every poem before I could go on.

So now I'm giving The Promises of Glass another go--I started to read it back then but couldn't get past poem one. But now, having tasted his syntax and breaks...well, so far, so good...

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Promises of Glass is a mash of both forward momentum meanderings and steady, single lined ideas or conversations. Much of the work is philosophically based with specific interest in color, duality, time, imprecision, and the inadequacy of photography. Palmer often sets up terse aphorisms with abstract descriptions or musings. Another aspect important to this work is the notion of listing or numbering, e.g. 18 poems named "Autobiography 1," "Autobiography 2," etc. In this vein, the book seems to explore certain motifs by approaching them en masse from different perspectives throughout the various poems. In relation to the difficulty of some of the poetry, the more directed focus of the book as a whole helps the reader get a sense of cohesiveness and direction.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

MP lives in a rarefied world-- more Objects than objects in his poems, given in a high diction with a lot of philosophical back and forth. Why are these poems not boring? Because he dreams in this forms, he doesn't just discurse about them-- his gestures aren't jabs at a blackboard but the waving arms of a sleepwalker. The blurb on his Selected is that this poetry is "somatic." Whatever. Read this book and its crazy autobiographies and its magnificent poem "I Do Not."