Human Abstract

In January 2015, Karl found himself writing a series of poems that marked a distinct stylistic departure from his previous writing. A year-and-a-half after beginning the project, he bundled the poems together under the title Human Abstract, and, after whittling the collection down, he found himself with a nearly 200-page manuscript. Before his death in Sept. 2019, he expressed a clear wish that these poems might reach a wider public.

Night-utterances written in the hours before dawn, Human Abstract, chronicles the passage from winter to spring, and explores the implicit mystery of what it is to be a human in time, capable of humor and longing, desire and violence: gone in a flash. The poems are a reflection of life, breathing, aching to be read.