Little Elegies for Sister Satan

by Michael Palmer

Shaped by the poet’s long view of history, these beautiful lamenting poems take sudden bracing plunges into close-up views of our apocalypse Little Elegies for Sister Satan presents indelibly beautiful new poems by Michael Palmer, “the foremost experimental poet of his generation, and perhaps of the last several generations” (citation for The Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award). Grappling with our dark times and our inability to stop destroying the planet or to end our endless wars, Palmer offers a counterlight of wit ( poetry was dead again / they said again ), as well as the glow of wonder. In polyphonic passages, voices speak from a decentered place, yet are rooted in the whole history of culture that has gone “When I think of ‘possible worlds,’ I think not of philosophy, but of elegy. And impossible worlds. Resistant worlds.”

In the light of day
perhaps all of this
will make sense.
But have we come this far,
come this close to death,
just to make sense?

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published May 4, 2021

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

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Palmer's sequence framing "Sister Satan" now stretches across two books: this one, as well as The Laughter of the Sphinx (2016). Sister Satan is a personae of "the noetic poem, the poem of unknowing," the lexis coming just short of transmission in complete meaning, herald of completion, herald of regret, setting for silence.

I have not yet read the earlier book. But Palmer is one of our masters, emerging from the Vancouver vanguard c. 1964, well on six decades of reading, commenting on the lyric, translating French peers like Emmanuel Hocquard (1940-2019), editing anthologies of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group writers, as well as the magazine, Joglars, refashioning the line of the Eliotic poem. It was the middle section here where my pleasure flagged, as his line can have the ease of the the Eastern European expat line of, e.g., a Charles Simic. The third section includes more recent poems that include curses against our former president, as well as poems in conversation with Han Shan and Pessoa. Palmer always suggests to me possibility of magisterial indifference within West Coast poetics.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Palmer’s poems in Little Elegies for Sister Satan amount to what feels more like little trifles or little sketches. The poems feel more like drafts yearning for something profound to say, rather than elegies summoning an attempt at deep reflection. I just didn’t encounter any real depth or meaning from this somewhat opaque collection. I’m not surprised to see that most readers have given this volume three stars. It’s a quick, easy read with a handful of pithy lines and interesting thoughts here and there, but overall the volume left me without a memorable verse that demanded to be quoted.

[Jeff Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sighhhhhh. Some caveats. I’m an English teacher. I appreciate poetry. I attempt to read modern poetry (not just the stuff that has already been canonized and is taught to school children). If there are good things out in the universe, I want to experience them.

That being said, I have such a visceral, negative reaction to modern poetry. I don’t get it. I’m an educated person. I’m well-read. But I’m clueless reading poetry like this. Is it meant to be so unfathomable? I read the whole collection and, apart from a few witty lines, I couldn’t tell you anything significant about this poetry collection. Palmer has won plenty of awards. This collection came recommended to me. The reviews seem favorable . . . So I don’t know what gives.

I guess I just like traditional structures and rhythm over prose with enjambments and obfuscating language.

One standout poem for me:

There

I have had poems published in countless journals over the years.

Now, I officially withdraw them.

There, that's better.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little Elegies for Sister Satan is perhaps the most annotated book of poetry in my collection. This is perhaps the best compliment I can give. This book astounds me. So many of these poems have had a lasting impact on me. I find myself thinking about them often, particularly Thinking of Distant Wars, Midnights: Strange Speech, and Midnights: Sugar. Little Elegies will always hold a place of honor in my poetry collection and I truly cannot recommend it enough. Keeping that in mind, this is not the most accessible book of poetry and I would not recommend it to someone new to the genre.

[DW Folmar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate the specific geographical imagery in these poems. Linguistically, Palmer’s poems are as fluid and lively as they are solemn and severe.

[Hillary Smith-Maddern · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prose with enjambments does not work for me as poetry.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's always good to be reminded that the world has burned down before.

[The_J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gems exist in this tome.

Midnight: Words
Words only get in the way
so they say

[Brian James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An artist with words, a work of word art.