By Gina Covelli
Photo by Benjamin Wilks |
It
was like old times, sitting in the yellow vinyl chair across from Karl Elder in
his Lakeland College office, which was lit only by the late afternoon sun. The
standard can of cola in a faded coozie sat to the right of his computer
keyboard, hidden among the stacks of books and papers littering his desk. And
like I had done so many times before, when I was Karl’s poetry student, I took
a casual glance over my left shoulder to see the beautifully classic and
complex poster-sized portrait of Anne Sexton before beginning the conversation.