Michael Palmer. Photo by Juno Gemes
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Falling Down in America
Every three seconds someone over sixty-five
falls down in America.
Our records show
that you are over sixty-five
and may therefore have already
fallen down in America
maybe more than once.
Perhaps upon entering your bath
you slipped
and cracked open your skull
and subsequently drowned
in a pool of blood.
If so, disregard this notice.
Perhaps while gazing at the sea
distractedly one day
your balance failed
and the waves carried you away
toward the irradiated swells
of Fukushima.
If so, never mind—
the flesh has already peeled
from your limbs
and your eyes
have melted in their sockets
in which case
you should disregard this notice.
We need hardly remind you
that many of your friends
and relatives, perhaps beloved uncles,
aunts, cousins, your seven brothers
and sisters, parents assuredly,
may have succumbed in some manner
to the fateful equation
of gravity and age.
In addition, it is likely
that your investments recently caved
and as a result, from the shock,
you fainted upon the cheap
Mexican tiles
of your dining room floor
and days later awoke
among impersonal professionals,
masked and clad in white,
and addressing you
as if you were a child.
If so, you now know
that you are utterly alone
in this life.
Please favor us with a reply
regarding our one-time offer
which will soon expire.
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Michael Palmer was born into an Italian-American family in Manhattan in 1943 and has lived in San Francisco since 1969. He has taught at numerous universities in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has published translations from a variety of languages, in particular French, Brazilian Portuguese, and Russian. He has been involved in joint projects with many visual artists and composers in the United States and elsewhere and has also served as an artistic collaborator with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company for close to fifty years. His most recent poetry collection, Little Elegies for Sister Satan, from New Directions, was published in May of 2021.Early in 2022, Nightboat Books will bring out a new edition of a prose work, The Danish Notebook. [For more on Michael Palmer, see this link.]
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Brilliant. A closed room of a poem with just enough oxygen to eat and laugh and cry for one last time. Thanks. Indran Amirthanayagam ([email protected])
Posted by: Indran Amirthanayagam | February 20, 2022 at 11:41 AM
Oh Michael Palmer! I've loved him well. And because I laugh and cry, here, at the same time: I love him still.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | February 20, 2022 at 12:29 PM
Terrific poem. Is it from Palmer's "Little Elegies for Sister Satan" or is it new? In any case. . .hats off.
Posted by: David Lehman | February 20, 2022 at 12:35 PM
Brilliant!! I am "falling" for this poet big time! A poignantly funny look at aging.
Posted by: Denise Duhamel | February 20, 2022 at 12:37 PM
The opening and closing lines about falling down and a one-time offer have the appearance of a genuine sales letter which the poet with utter disdain has deftly transformed into an expression of total madness.
Posted by: Peter Kearney | February 20, 2022 at 12:42 PM
I like this poem a lot. I've read so many times about those who have died as a result of "complications" from a fall. I want an uncomplicated fall, where I just fall and never get up, don't regain consciousness, and never have to worry again about falling and its complications. This poem is exactly what I needed today, a day on which I have not yet fallen but sense the inevitability of my fall.
Posted by: Howard Bass | February 20, 2022 at 02:01 PM
Hats off! Terrific poem.
Posted by: Susan Campbell | February 20, 2022 at 02:10 PM
Howard: But in the meantime, try to stay upright.
Posted by: Terence Winch | February 20, 2022 at 02:10 PM
Installing cables and sky hooks.
Posted by: Jody Payne | February 20, 2022 at 02:34 PM
Truly terrific poem. Thank you.
Posted by: Emily Fragos | February 20, 2022 at 03:44 PM
I’ve fallen and I did get up but it was a surprise at the time! Love this poem and the art work.
Posted by: Eileen | February 20, 2022 at 04:01 PM
As one who falls frequently when my beloved dog tries to lunge at a pup across the street who is "looking at her funny," I relate in a most physical way to this poem. As a reader (and writer), I am in love with the Letter to Resident (i.e., to the Fallen!) format. Irony and terror. And artistry. What's not to love.
Posted by: clarinda harriss | February 20, 2022 at 04:16 PM
brilliant
Posted by: lally | February 20, 2022 at 10:19 PM
“Falling Down in America” is an outstanding, unforgettable poem. It rewards rereading, which is the ineluctable dividend of the best of verse: inexhaustible in both its meaning and its appeal. When I finished my initial reading of Michael Palmer’s poem, I asked myself what other poem reflected some of the extraordinary properties of his. My answer pleased me: “Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden. Michael Palmer’s lithe, ensorceling insight and deliciously summoned, deceptive matter-of-factness are comparable to Auden’s. Both poems brilliantly evoke falling and its consequences. Both poems also capture the often overlooked ennui attending a so-called “fatal fall.” In Auden’s poem, Icarus suffers the same insidious doom of indifference from those nearby. (I wonder if Palmer had a soupçon of Auden’s poem and even Pieter Brueghel’s inspiring painting “Fall of Icarus” in mind in lines 14-24.) Structurally, Palmer’s poem is ingeniously set up as a kind of reflexive form letter received in the mail from an insurance company seeking to scare or bully older customers into signing on. The stark opening two lines are designed to propel those customers (and, perforce, readers) to the succeeding lines. Moments of cavalier disregard (lines 13, 20, 26, and 46-48) come across as standardly mechanized prose from insurance companies, the masters of faux feelings, which Palmer impressively evokes. And that’s another part of the beauty of Palmer’s verse: a conjured callousness jolting us into recognition and, poetically and practically, submission. Both my parents died not long after “fatal falls.” Not a day goes by without my thinking of their life-ending missteps and the two most damning words in the English language: “what if.” For me, the reactional mix of all that and more makes Palmer’s poem par excellence. Kudos to Terence Winch for unfailingly finding estimable poems to post at his BAP blogsite. It’s more than a treat. It’s a gold mine. By the way, are the stairs seen in the accompanying photo of a fallen Laurel and Hardy from "Hats Off" in 1927 the same stairs seen in Laurel and Hardy’s classic "The Music Box" from 1932?
Posted by: Dr. Earle Hitchner | February 22, 2022 at 11:23 AM
Let me add one last bit of praise: the nimble humor percolating in Michael Palmer's "Falling Down in America." As I noted in my prior comment, the rewards of rereading this poem seem endless.
Posted by: Dr. Earle Hitchner | February 22, 2022 at 12:30 PM
Earle: thanks for this great and insightful comment.
Posted by: Terence Winch | February 22, 2022 at 04:58 PM
I love this poem's trapdoors, its depths, and also, it's interesting to learn that the listener is someone specific although the poem also includes us. I've admired Michael Palmer's work for years and years--it's wonderfully varied, always compelling.
Posted by: Don Berger | February 23, 2022 at 11:32 AM
Very dark and deftly humorous. Inspiration from the ads in magazines we tend not to read. Well done, Michael.
Posted by: Beth Joselow | February 23, 2022 at 09:24 PM
Brilliant! I just turned 70. There are no safety nets for us or the world.
Posted by: JoAnn Lena Jackson-Holt | February 24, 2022 at 03:01 PM
Superbly done, light and dark, funny and accurate in its officious consideration.
Posted by: Amy Holman | February 25, 2022 at 11:47 AM