At Passages (New Directions Paperbook; 803)
The poems in Palmer's new book may strike the reader as being in a state of constant disintegration. They reassemble, hold for a few lines, and fall to pieces again: "flower with a death's head at its center/center with a desert at its center/clock with ochre hands/its face a sun the sun/a multiple sun at 3 a.m./sun of limbs and sun of the lens/flower as it were a limb" and so on. At their best, the units that comprise the disintegration are compelling. But, then, evaluation is not the point. If meaning is exchanged in the culture of these poems, it's only by consenting adults and certainly shouldn't be an organized activity. There are those who take pleasure in this sort of thing, and this reviewer is one of them. Recommended for academic library collections.?Steven R. Ellis, Brooklyn P.L.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.