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Elephants and Butterflies - BOA Editions, Ltd.

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Elephants and Butterflies

By: Alan Michael Parker

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Regular price $16.00

About This Title

Both wild and calm, boisterous and quiet, the poems in Elephants & Butterflies employ Alan Michael Parker's trademark surprise, song, and startling metaphor while allowing the ideas to simmer just below the surface of the lyric. These poems accomplish the difficult task of being accessible while still pursuing complex philosophical and personal knowledge. Elephants & Butterflies includes, among other poems, a series of seven “free verse sonnets,” entitled “A Peal of Sonnets,” each named for a day of the week. As a series, the poems act as a “peal”: like the bells rung in cathedrals, in the “ringing of the changes,” the seven poems interrelate, their shared musical sonorities dynamic. Elsewhere in Elephants & Butterflies, Alan Michael Parker tests formal and free verse conventions, utilizing prose poem, elegy, ode, and rhyme. Combining the familiarity of formal elements with Alan Michael Parker's unique voice and vision, Elephants & Butterflies will surprise and gratify readers with each turn. "The straightforward poems of Parker's fifth collection reach for opposing poles, combining the sublime and the everyday, the lumbering elephant and the etheral butterfly...anchoring his poems with poignant ironies and vivid images...always, Parker writes with great sincerity."--Publishers Weekly "Overall…Elephants and Butterflies is carefully made and very accessible.  It can withstand multiple readings, and makes a compelling addition to Parker’s body of work."–New Madrid: A Journal of Contemporary Literature "Parker does his work with a light touch and an inquisitive spirit; he sees and questions the odd angles and details that can make a common thought or experince matter in a new way." --Pleiades


What Was He Saying and to Whom


What was he saying and to whom?
With a silver thermos he left the building;
He paused in the courtyard and turned.
What was he saying and to whom?

The building at dawn not yet a building
Paused the way all buildings do.
What was he saying and to whom?

Time doesn't stop; time doesn't wait;
Time has never moved.
What was he saying and to whom?

If the dog had been sleeping
She would not have awakened,
So small was the moment to lose.
What was he saying and to whom?

What was he saying and to whom?
The courtyard at dawn was the same
As the sky, the sky swept clean by the moon.
What was he saying and to whom?

Good morning, good-bye, I love you, I'll try.
What was he saying and to whom?


© BOA Editions, Ltd 2008

Available editions:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-934414-05-7
Price: $16.00
Publishing Date: June 2008

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