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William A. Palmer, Jr.
and award-winning poet |
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Contact Bill by E-Mail for Editing Services <-------- or ---------> Telephone: (804) 843-6177 |
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Biography
Now retired from a forty-year career as a Protestant clergyman, Bill Palmer is ready to offer skills cultivated during the practice of bivocational ministry. As a contract copy editor and proofreader for National Defense University Press from 1982 to 1990, he participated in the publication of more than two dozen books dealing with military history, diplomacy, and technology. Between 1990 and 1995 he was a member of the production team that edited and proofread the flagship journals—Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Science & Technology, and Chemtech—of the American Chemical Society. He taught English composition, business and technical writing, and speech as an adjunct instructor at the College of Southern Maryland from 1995 to 2000.
In addition to his credentials as an editor and teacher, he is a published author in his own right, having produced numerous essays on religion for magazines such as Christian Standard, The Lookout, and The Disciple. He wrote Military Librarians Workshop: A Premier Gathering of Military Librarians, 1957–1999 and more recently has produced a series of essays on local history (“Firing on the Swan”; “West Point: Civil War Concentration Camp”; and “Explosion of the West Point”) for the Historical Society of West Point, Virginia.
Two of his poems, “War Games” and “Washing Up,” received first-place honors in the 2007 and 2008 annual poetry contests sponsored by the Pamunkey Regional Library. Five of his poems appear in the anthology The Poet’s Domain, published in 2008.
He and his wife, Carolyn, live near the Pamunkey River in West Point, Virginia.
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Poetry |
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Washing Up by William A. Palmer, Jr.
Now that the guests are gone, she stands before the kitchen sink in stocking feet, an apron-vested priestess on her holy ground.
Her acolyte, I clear the dining table of a paten flecked with crumbs, a chalice sloshing dregs of coffee, cooled.
They join the dirty dishes on the countertop, a mute, expectant queue, like catechumens gathered to receive a sacrament.
She plunges each in turn beneath the steaming suds, her reddened hands a sacrifice to gilded banding delicately limned.
Then from the stainless pool they rise transformed, a sheen of water sparkling in the light, our baptized congregation newly shrived.
We offer up the common calling of our task, the one who washes, one who dries, familiar practiced rhythms without words
until the service ends, our vessels purified. The gurgling water in the drain intones a blessed canticle of peace.
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War Games by William A. Palmer, Jr.
“It is well that war is so terrible, else we should too soon grow fond of it.” —Robert E. Lee
On rainy Sunday afternoons I’d muster my soldiers on the living room floor, where on a parade ground of parquet they’d pass in grand review.
Their paper pennants folded fast on slender leaden staffs would snap and billow before me in imaginary breeze.
My ears could take the tap of thimble drums as deafening, reverberating deep within to rhythms of a bellicose tattoo.
I carefully aligned the serried ranks: brave infantry and lancers on rearing steeds, artillerymen attentive and alert behind their brazen guns.
Then with my battle line complete I’d scrutinize each member of this tiny host, and silently they’d turn toward me impassive painted faces.
So, ignorant, I played at war and never dreamed the figures that would make this scene complete: a frightened throng of refugees, a huddled mother, or a bleeding child. |
