The Laughter of the Sphinx

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Author: Michael Palmer Publisher: New Directions Publishing (2016) The title poem begins “The laughter of the Sphinx / caused my eyes to bleed” and haunts us with the ruin we are m aking of our world, even as Palmer revels in its incredible beauty. Such central tensions in The Laughter of the Sphinx—between beauty and loss, love and death, motion and rest, knowledge and ignorance—glow in Palmer’s lyrical play of light and entirely hypnotize the reader. The stakes, as always with Palmer, are very high, essentially life and death: “Please favor us with a reply / regarding our one-time offer / which will soon expire.” Show more