Palace Of Reptiles

Maggie O’Sullivan

Palace of Reptiles is the long-awaited followup volume to British poet Maggie O’Sullivan’s In the House of the Shaman (Reality Street Editions). Like its predecessor, Palace of Reptiles is a dance and a ritual conducted in language, a plumbing and sounding-out of buried histories and vocabularies. Ranging from the brief and beautiful “Ellen’s Lament” to the central long poem “DOUBTLESS,” the eight poems included in this book touch on multiple genres (elegy, celebration, performance art, poetics talk) in order to transform them. Palace of Reptiles confirms O’Sullivan as one of the most compelling poets now writing.

“O’Sullivan’s poems are acrostic spells from a half-known language – old and almost forgotten, new and still being learned. They are steps in a contrarian dance, quarter notes in a songering, pianissimos in a lulla, white pages stained with thrown talk. Here, in Palace of Reptiles, language is fast, both as returning and as setting-out. To begin, strap yourself in: then, open the book and let yourself go.” —Pete Smith

Reviews

Sample Poem

About the Author

Maggie O’Sullivan (b. 1951) is a poet, visual artist, editor and publisher; she has published and performed her work internationally since the late 1970s. Her publications include A Natural History in 3 Incomplete Parts (Magenta, 1985), Un-Assuming Personas (writers forum, 1985), Divisions of Labour (Galloping Dog, 1986), Unofficial Word (Galloping Dog, 1988), In the House of the Shaman (Reality Street, 1993), and red shifts (etruscan, 2001), as well as the collaboration with Bruce Andrews EXCLA (writers forum, 1993). She also edited Out of Everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK for Reality Street (1996).

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