ABSTRACT

M ichael Palmer's poetry is an ongoing philosophical investi-gation of the relationship of language, culture, history, and the human. Often dreamlike and surreal, his poems explore the tensions implicit in rendering and deciphering the "real" and foreground the linguistic and ideational processes involved in making a world. His poetry focuses on the boundaries of the known and, following a relentless mode of philosophical inquiry, searches for the flaws and absences in the human-made representations of culture and history.