Random Acts
CyberWit, 2021
Random Acts is the newest collection from Karl Elder and features 60 previously uncollected poems, rich in evocative language, imagery, and metaphorical conceit Elder is known for.
Alpha Images: Poems Selected and New
Water’s Edge Press, 2020
Karl Elder has gathered the best of his poetry in Alpha Images: Poems Selected and New. This 270 page volume includes over 50 new or previously uncollected poems. Noted for exceptional range—his work in open, closed, and invented forms—Elder’s verse is similarly multifaceted in his choice of subject matter.
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Reverie’s Ilk
Cyberwit, 2020
Available Now
A collection of prose poems entitled Reverie’s Ilk: Collected Prose Poems is soon to be released from CyberWit.
“Karl Elder is a poet of rich imagination and high intelligence, whose work I have admired for many years. His formal prowess extends from the prose poem to the haiku to the challenging abecedarius. It is always a pleasure to open any book of his or to encounter a new poem in a little magazine.” — David Lehman, editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry
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Phobophobia
CyberWit, 2019
Wisconsin poet Karl Elder’s full-length collection Phobophobia personifies our fears, presenting them in alphabetical order from acrophobia (height) to zoophobia (animals), with a handy glossary in the back. In between A and Z lurk the usual suspects: darkness, death, and ghosts—along with obscure ones like fear of machines, writing, time, symbols, and jealousy. In this collection, the touch of surrealism inherent in Elder’s style is enhanced by the skewed perceptions of the various sufferers narrating these poems. The book’s psycho-poetic explorations range from cathartic to enjoyably ridiculous. ~Michael Kriesel, poetry editor of Rosebud magazine.
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Earth As It Is In Heaven
Pebblebrook Press, 2016
A parable of religious mysticism that’s part love story and part mystery, with a touch of rural hijinks, Karl Elder’s new novel is a welcome addition to the list of titles from one of Wisconsin’s top poets. ~Michael Kriesel, the winner of North American Review’s 2015 James Hearst Poetry Prize and past president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
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Gilgamesh at the Bellagio
The National Poetry Review Press, 2007.
Gilgamesh at the Bellagio opens memorably as Karl Elder confronts the reader with his always-astonishing prosodic acrobatics, showcased this time in 26 deeply intelligent decasyllabic abecedarians. It ends with more of the same (but backwards!) in “Z Ain’t Just for Zabacedarium.” Glimmering in between is the title poem, which recreates, with sardonic humor and a perfect ear for the vernacular, aspects of society’s profound collective melancholia. A tour de force by a superlative American poet. –Marilyn L. Taylor, Contributing Editor of The Writer.
These intellectual poems owe a debt to the tradition of cerebral poets: Shakespeare, Donne and the metaphysicals, Modernists like Eliot, Pound, and Stevens, and John Berryman’s Dream Songs, although they also reference pop culture figures. Difficult at times, Elder’s poems merit careful attention, both for their fresh approach to form, as well as for their range of subject matter and their wit, and they reward close, repeated readings. ~Wendy Vardaman in Free Verse.
[Karl Elder] is, for my money, writing some of the most innovative and resonant verse out there. And, man, he is out there. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean that while he seems to have his literary ancestors like the rest of us (Stevens for his lushness, Donne for his wit, Berryman for his change-up syntax pitch), he seems to come at the world from an angle uniquely his own. ~Beth Ann Fennelly in Black Warrior Review.