Disclosures

By Michael Palmer b. 1943 Michael Palmer

Beneath the writing on the wall

is the writing it was designed

to obscure. The two together

form a third kind

There is no writing

on the wall’s other side

Perhaps this lack

constitutes a fourth kind

Some of the writing on the wall

will be designed as truth

some as art

It is said to represent a mirror

of everyday life in its time

“Fabius Naso

talks through his asshole

and shits out his mouth”

for example

“Foute les Arabes”

for example

Certain words and images

or parts of images

have been chipped away

These often turn up for sale

at sidewalk stalls

before the walls

of other cities

I too have an image for sale

It’s the image of a poem

and is to be found

on the reverse of this sheet

Source: The Lion Bridge (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1998)

Biography

Michael Palmer was born in New York City and educated at Harvard in the early 1960s, where he encountered Confessional poetry. His opposition to Confessionalism found root in a developing poetics when he attended the landmark 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, a three-week gathering where he met Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Clark Coolidge. Correspondence with those three poets greatly influenced Palmer’s early development . . .

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