Michael Palmer: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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                                                                                                                       Laurel and Hardy in Hats Off, 1927

Comments

[Indran Amirthanayagam]

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])

[Grace Cavalieri]

Oh Michael Palmer! I've loved him well. And because I laugh and cry, here, at the same time: I love him still.

[David Lehman]

Terrific poem. Is it from Palmer's "Little Elegies for Sister Satan" or is it new? In any case. . .hats off.

[Denise Duhamel]

Brilliant!! I am "falling" for this poet big time! A poignantly funny look at aging.

[Peter Kearney]

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.

[Howard Bass]

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.

[Susan Campbell]

Hats off! Terrific poem.

[Terence Winch]

Howard: But in the meantime, try to stay upright.

[Jody Payne]

Installing cables and sky hooks.

[Emily Fragos]

Truly terrific poem. Thank you.

[Eileen]

I’ve fallen and I did get up but it was a surprise at the time! Love this poem and the art work.

[clarinda harriss]

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.

[lally]

brilliant

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

“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?

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

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.

[Terence Winch]

Earle: thanks for this great and insightful comment.

[Don Berger]

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.

[Beth Joselow]

Very dark and deftly humorous. Inspiration from the ads in magazines we tend not to read. Well done, Michael.

[JoAnn Lena Jackson-Holt]

Brilliant! I just turned 70. There are no safety nets for us or the world.

[Amy Holman]

Superbly done, light and dark, funny and accurate in its officious consideration.