Michael Palmer - Aygi Cycle (2)

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Our walk then by sea's edge,
land's westernmost edge,
and the waves' violent crests
that day, when my despair noticed
the shifting, the silent migration
of the dunes, and you
the low alyssum flowering white,
artemisia, hence Artemis, her
rites, speaking as we walked
of things other than we thought

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To fully understand my relationship with Language poets, we have to go back to my first introduction to the movement. That would be with Michael Palmer’s 2000 collection The Promises of Glass. In fact, I know the exact day I first read Palmer’s work. Brief storytime!

I mentioned on my very first substack post that I was previously a member of a poetry triple that went by the name of SOM. In that same recount, I mentioned that we put on a show.

My memory of the show is patchy at best, and my memory of the evening after is even more so. After the show was done, we were selling CDs with recordings of our pieces (because we thought CD chapbooks were going to be the thing to revolutionize poetry, obviously) and a guy gave me a copy of Palmer’s book in exchange for one. I ended up getting pretty messed up that night and sleeping it off through a couple of roundtrip rides on the 1 train. I lost the book somewhere in the shuffle but not before getting the lines “All clocks are clouds./ Parts are greater than the whole./ A philosopher is starving in a rooming house, while it rains outside” absolutely stuck in my brain. I have the clearest memory of sitting on the curb outside the Comedy Cellar (which is across the street from where Alibi used to be) and reading that last line in awe of the image. That line would later inspire me to pick up Palmer’s 2005 absurdly good Company of Moths. Really, if you read any of these books you’ll be better for it.

Today’s piece is from 2011’s Thread. Specifically, it is from a set of poems that references the work of the late Russian poet Gennady Aygi. Also worth a read if you haven’t had a chance. Palmer opens with an emphasis on the liminality of the shore, repeating the word edge to remind us of the precarious nature of a walk along the border between the safety of ground and the threat of open water. This "westernmost edge" suggests a place of transition where the familiar falls to the vast and unpredictable. The way he presents it also highlights the duality of perspective. It is at once the edge of the water and the edge of the land. Each is represented as being locked in this conflict.

The image of the "waves' violent crests" informs us that the aggressions are not equal across the battle lines. The sea embodies a sense of instability and destruction. The unknown brings power with it, threatening the comfort of the known. This symbolizes both the chaotic forces of nature and the internal turmoil of the speaker. He finds his attention consumed by the "shifting, the silent migration/ of the dunes” contrasting the assault of the water with a retreat by the land. The inclusion of “ And you” at the end of the line introduces another person who is seemingly following the example of the sand in spacing themselves from a destructive force.

Quick sonic break - “westernmost edge” and “wave’s violent crest” just blend together so beautifully and flow effortlessly into the wall of “d” sounds in the line “that day, when my despair noticed.” It puts a spotlight on the speakers despair that is accentuated by the caesura following “shifting.” All the flow is stopped dead.

One of Aygi’s most famous collections is dedicated to his daughter. Palmer has similarly dedicated a book of poems to his daughter (the impossible-to-find Songs for Sarah that I have been desperate to find a copy of for the better part of the last 10 years - if you know of a copy, let me know) as well as numerous other poems throughout his career. This information helps us to find a reference point for the “you” and the rest of the poem.

The “you” of the poem notices "artemisia, hence Artemis, her / rites," making reference to the ancient Greece use of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) as a tampon. The referenced “rites” of Artemis included the celebration of a girl’s transition to womanhood. Suddenly the shifting dunes and the speaker’s despair can be rooted in reality. A father is coming to terms with the liminality of his daughter's growing up. The beautiful scene, dressed in poetics, is a snapshot of a father and daughter walking along the beach.

With this new view, the final line “speaking as we walked / of things other than we thought" implies hope (likely on both sides of the relationship) to hold on to the familiar dynamic of their relationship in the face of nature’s violent and unavoidable assault.