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I GIVE YOU THE PLANETS, poetry by Alison Palmer
Publication Date: November 15, 2025
Paperback, 96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-24-6
In her fifth collection, I Give You the Planets, Alison Palmer’s poems are more than earthbound offerings; they seek collective energy and love that “hurtle[s] forever in a straight line.” Palmer wants to unite us in our desire for earthiness, but we tend to forget that gravitational pull exists to be challenged as well as embraced. Think of DaVinci, who has “been dead / for hundreds of years,” Palmer reminds us. “[T]hey plundered // his virginal flying machine to keep us / on Earth, to hide the otherworldly.” So much lies beyond us, the poet seems to say, as we continue to exist, story after poem, in all our loveliness and our devastation. If we get lucky, language exposes the necessary passion to commune with one another and with our environment, day after day. “Nothing spares us, not / even the moon’s white blade,” Palmer notices, and her poems offer us a different orbit, a glimpse into our vast interconnectedness.
Praise for Alison Palmer & I Give You the Planets
There is a lush romanticism at the heart of I Give You the Planets, a romanticism that sees both the gorgeousness and the devastation in love. On the one hand, the speaker of one poem touches the beloved “to sign my name where no one else can see.” On the other hand, the speaker of another poem plaintively declares, “I break my song.” Alison Palmer is a poet of the fiercest noticing. From the slow shift of sand to the flick of an eyelash, she fuses the rhythms of human passion onto the rhythms of our earthliness in weather, landscapes, and other creatures. I Give You the Planets is a book of ache, delight, daring.
—Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones
The belief in a principle of correspondence exists from ancient times—one that offers a glimpse of the interconnectedness of all things, all states of being. At the heart of I Give You the Planets is a similar proposition: in the worlds of feeling and thought, memory and action, the energy of our every manifestation tethers us in unseen orbits to each other. Sometimes we dance away, sometimes “we exchange our love // in the dark.” And sometimes, as Alison Palmer does in this collection, we gather the shimmer of “[w]hat we’ve lost... into language.”
—Luisa A. Igloria, author of Caulbearer
About the Author
Alison Palmer is the author of The Offing (Broadstone Books, 2024), Bargaining with the Fall (Broadstone Books, 2023), Everything Is Normal Here (Broadstone Books, 2022), and The Need for Hiding (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Alison was the recipient of a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Awad. She is an editor at Broadstone Books and teaches poetry workshops for The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Alison hosts the monthly podcast, PoetSpeak with Broadstone Books, and you can find her on the web: www.alisonpalmer.org.
Publication Date: November 15, 2025
Paperback, 96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-24-6
In her fifth collection, I Give You the Planets, Alison Palmer’s poems are more than earthbound offerings; they seek collective energy and love that “hurtle[s] forever in a straight line.” Palmer wants to unite us in our desire for earthiness, but we tend to forget that gravitational pull exists to be challenged as well as embraced. Think of DaVinci, who has “been dead / for hundreds of years,” Palmer reminds us. “[T]hey plundered // his virginal flying machine to keep us / on Earth, to hide the otherworldly.” So much lies beyond us, the poet seems to say, as we continue to exist, story after poem, in all our loveliness and our devastation. If we get lucky, language exposes the necessary passion to commune with one another and with our environment, day after day. “Nothing spares us, not / even the moon’s white blade,” Palmer notices, and her poems offer us a different orbit, a glimpse into our vast interconnectedness.
Praise for Alison Palmer & I Give You the Planets
There is a lush romanticism at the heart of I Give You the Planets, a romanticism that sees both the gorgeousness and the devastation in love. On the one hand, the speaker of one poem touches the beloved “to sign my name where no one else can see.” On the other hand, the speaker of another poem plaintively declares, “I break my song.” Alison Palmer is a poet of the fiercest noticing. From the slow shift of sand to the flick of an eyelash, she fuses the rhythms of human passion onto the rhythms of our earthliness in weather, landscapes, and other creatures. I Give You the Planets is a book of ache, delight, daring.
—Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones
The belief in a principle of correspondence exists from ancient times—one that offers a glimpse of the interconnectedness of all things, all states of being. At the heart of I Give You the Planets is a similar proposition: in the worlds of feeling and thought, memory and action, the energy of our every manifestation tethers us in unseen orbits to each other. Sometimes we dance away, sometimes “we exchange our love // in the dark.” And sometimes, as Alison Palmer does in this collection, we gather the shimmer of “[w]hat we’ve lost... into language.”
—Luisa A. Igloria, author of Caulbearer
About the Author
Alison Palmer is the author of The Offing (Broadstone Books, 2024), Bargaining with the Fall (Broadstone Books, 2023), Everything Is Normal Here (Broadstone Books, 2022), and The Need for Hiding (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Alison was the recipient of a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Awad. She is an editor at Broadstone Books and teaches poetry workshops for The Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia. Alison hosts the monthly podcast, PoetSpeak with Broadstone Books, and you can find her on the web: www.alisonpalmer.org.