The Laughter of the Sphinx

In his latest work, stalwart avant-gardist Palmer (Thread) makes use of repetition in sonic textures, word choice, and themes to let the varied elements of his poems echo and reverberate, creating a sense of meaning and movement amid what is seen and felt. “Mineral light and whale light,/ light of memory, light of the eye,” he writes in a sequence prepared for a dance collaboration. The collection’s two-part structure complicates such binaries as creation and destruction, life and death, and momentum and inertia. Palmer toes middle ground in order to demonstrate the fragility of modern life. “Let us/ write without meaning/ to” he exclaims, cleverly breaking his lines. His poems advocate for being both present and grounded, yet remaining capable of dreaming into the future. The work also points toward the hope of tuning in to a common frequency: “to dwell/ to dwell upon/ to dwell among” in order to become fully cognizant of one’s surroundings. As he writes in the second section, “Still”: “Things get lost/ things whose words/ can no longer be heard// Still we try to find them/ and place them/ inside the silences.” Palmer chooses to dwell among the limitations of his medium to find the beauty that fleetingness creates. [em](June) [/em]