Free Verse
Marsh River Editions

Catch and Release
Chasing Saturday Night
in search of "Green Dolphin Street"
Lines on Lake Winnebago
Loose Change
Mead
Saying Grace
Slightly Off Q
Something Near the Dance Floor
Waiting For Beethoven
Walnut from Waterloo

"Transportation" by Karl Elder

A car should take you where you want to go,
boast a bit of personality, but
claim no soul. So why so hollow having
done away with this one, a van, sold--not
expunged like the rest, towed I mean, more beasts
for the bone yard--when a hundred thirteen
grand ought to be enough for anyone.
Here we're talking miles, of course, not moola:
in ten-plus years four trips around the world.
Just think of the tenths. Figure the inches!
Kept I it another minute, why I'm
likely to have done run out of road or,
more likely, luck, luck being a function
no less of grace than of space to live it.
O for another junket in my junk--
PT Cruiser be damned--though I had no
qualms the moment I signed, sacrificed all
rightful claims in exchange for money down.
So I scrawled a second time, transferred the
title to a John Someone whom, you'd think,
you might recall his entire name except,
very sudden, dumb as a manikin
with seizures of sentimentality,
Xmas come and gone, you, I, you, you chump
you, are transported here, an untethered
zeppelin for a sober head now instead.

Karl Elder's Mead: Twenty-six Abecedariums is a book to inhabit, not just read. Like Joseph Cornell's boxes, it distills a life and a mind, its obsessions and excursions. For Elder has boxed himself into his form, the abecedarium, and twenty-six of them at that, in order to free his imagination and tongue. The result recalls Wallace Stevens' definition of poetry as 'whirroos / and scintillant sizzlings.' High-spirited wordplay cooperates here with meditations on history and much else; the arbitrary (his chosen box) marries the necessary (the journeying human soul, impaled by wonder, beset by questions). Above all, Mead worships at the altar of Language, Elder's truest home. At one point, the poet invokes Xanadu; this book is conspicuously his pleasure-dome, and now it is ours. I could go on, the book is so wonderful...

-Philip Dacey

Karl Elder has cheerfully and skillfully painted himself into one of those corners that reward exploration when the serious sense of playful craft is as strong as it is here. Within their constraints these poems demonstrate an amazing tonal and emotional range.

-Henry Taylor

WARNING: Mead is heady, intoxicating stuff that just might make an addict out of you. Elder's razzle-dazzle fireworks of form and language delight and impress, but never disguise his substantial gifts as a poet of the heart and mind. You'll thirst for another round from this immensely talented brewmaster.

-Beth Ann Fennelly