Alan Michael Parker – författare

Both male and female poets cross the gender line: men assume a female voice and women a male voice. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse is a fascinating collection of such poems, beginning in the age of Chaucer and working its way through to the present day. Together these poems offer a unique collection of masks, personae and voices, rife with issues of class, gender and race. Alan Parker and Mark Willhardt, in bringing together these poems for the first time, assert an entirely new paradigm; a theoretical and practical reading of a heretofore undefined genre. They also provide a critical introduction which synthesizes traditional literary debates with current gender theory and, through the lens of historical, literary, social and theoretical issues, present a new way to interpret these ''ventriloquized'' poems. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse provides a wealth of material for students and teachers of literature and gender studies. It is a compelling collection which will also appeal to poetry lovers.

Both male and female poets cross the gender line: men assume a female voice and women a male voice. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse is a fascinating collection of such poems, beginning in the age of Chaucer and working its way through to the present day. Together these poems offer a unique collection of masks, personae and voices, rife with issues of class, gender and race. Alan Parker and Mark Willhardt, in bringing together these poems for the first time, assert an entirely new paradigm; a theoretical and practical reading of a heretofore undefined genre. They also provide a critical introduction which synthesizes traditional literary debates with current gender theory and, through the lens of historical, literary, social and theoretical issues, present a new way to interpret these ''ventriloquized'' poems. The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse provides a wealth of material for students and teachers of literature and gender studies. It is a compelling collection which will also appeal to poetry lovers.

Elephants & Butterflies combines the imaginative forays of The Vandals with the more meditative approach of Love Song with Motor Vehicles. Both wild and calm, boisterous and quiet, the poems in Elephants & Butterflies use surprise, song, and startling metaphor while allowing the ideas to simmer just below the surface of the lyric. The poems manage the difficult task of being highly readable and accessible, while still containing complex philosophical and personal knowledge.

Alan Michael Parker (www.amparker.com) teaches at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. He also teaches at Queens University, where he is core faculty in the low-residency MFA program.

In Love Song with Motor Vehicles, Alan Michael Parker marshals a penetrating wit and sharp irony that mirrors that of Charles Simic and John Berryman. Parker’s robust imagination explores the music in places poetry doesn’t usually travel. His poems find their epiphanies early on, and, most strikingly, do not close at their endings but, rather, open.

Alan Michael Parker is the author of two books of poetry, and co-editor of two scholarly works, The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse and Who’s Who in 20th Century World Poetry (Routledge Books). In 2000, his poems were included in all three major volumes of "younger American poets" (Carnegie Mellon University Press, University of Southern Illinois Press, and University of New England Press).