An American Successor to Dante: Michael Palmer and His Depiction of the States from the 1970's

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This research demonstrated that the American poet Michael Palmer (b. 1943) employed Dante’s method of “polysemy”(i.e., packing multiple meanings in words or expressions), so that he could pursue the possibility of “resistant poetry.” The term “resistance” for Palmer does not mean a solipsistic view of a given war; it rather involves a sort of contrapuntal analysis, which clearly runs counter to the simplistic notions of binaries, such as good and evil, and the powerful and the masses. This paradoxical nature in Palmer’s practice operates as he tries to investigate the hidden lies and mendacities of the political slogans promoting war.