Steven Karl on His Poems
One day while I was drinking a cup of coffee & daydreaming about James Schuyler’s poetry, I began to wonder what his poems would look like if he was a fan of horror films. The thought came & went. Days into nights back into days. I was already at work on a manuscript containing mostly elegies when I wrote the two elegies & “Double Feature.” I wanted to embrace the slippage between reality & fiction & how fictional characters live their lives inside of our minds, a haunting always waiting to happen. I also wanted to celebrate our geekdom over slashers & going to the movies, an attempt to capture the thrills, the screams, & the terrorjoy that floods through our bodies as the cinema goes dark & the screen suddenly floods in projector light.