Why? I hope it’s nothing sinister [scary music ensues].

Where were you born and what was growing up like for the young Karl Parker?

I was born a fraternal twin in Colorado Springs, CO, and grew up in Lock Haven, PA. It’s a small town so there was a lot of time in between things, at least it often felt like that. Like anyone, I imagine, I felt myself most clearly in between things, growing up.

At 19 I spent a year at Trinity College, Dublin, in an attempt (or so I then thought) to know whether or not the words I produced were things I had to do—things that came from me and not any environment or familiarity I had ever derived identity from, acts that would stand up in isolation--in other words, to know whether they were poetry or not. I thought I had to earn it in a way, forge my own relationship to literature, no matter how grandiose it all might sound. I felt it like a terror at times.

In your opinion, do you feel that poetry can be taught or is it something one is just naturally gifted with?

Neither, strictly. What can be taught is learned and the rest has nothing to do with learning, nor anything innate in people. Probably has more to do with how people relate to experience, to having experience at all, whatever the details of their lives may be. If you could by whatever means help someone better overhear themselves thinking--talking to themselves—and then arrange, play, and after think soundingly, then you would help them with their writing, the intersection of things they are insofar as they arrive in words. I’m afraid I’m starting to jingle now, and so will refrain.

You have quite an academic resume. The University of Pittsburgh, Cornell. How did these schools influence you as a writer?

Uhn, I really don’t know how to answer this. Both were and are points of almost infinite departure and rearrival, how’s that?

Do you believe that art of all sorts is embraced in New York?

No. New sorts, new kinds, new intersections are always coming into being, not only in good old New York. I suspect that very few if any of these forms are embraced as often as they should be.

When I was living there, I felt I was becoming a part of something rare and historic. What are your thoughts on the New York School writing scene?

It no longer exists, in fact never did, if you mean Ashbery, et al. Ashbery, however, still exists. Unfortunately, I myself no longer exist in New York.

Who are some of your favorite writers that you find yourself coming back to?

Kafka, Berryman, Ashbery, Stein, Celan.

So how would you describe your style of writing and who, if anyone, would you compare your style to?

My writing is quite literally beyond description, incomparably styled. Anyone should say that. Not only is it fun to say such things, they’re also true.

From where you stand, what makes a good poem?

Useful singularities in thought and sense take place.

What are you working on now?

Scattered poems, sending out my Blue & Red Roses, a dissertation, cleaning up dead pumpkins.

Where can readers go to read more of your work?

Can we have our ball back?, Eleven Bulls, No Tell Motel—and The Tiny, when it appears. I should be in the next Spoon River, as well.

Do you know of any writers you think we should keep an eye on who is turning the genre on its ear?