The author of five collections of poems and a novel, "Cry Uncle," Parker will read from his latest collection, "Elephants & Butterflies" (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008).

Wrote one reviewer of the recent work, "I would guess that Parker’s brand of ironic inquiry will keep the critics busy for quite a while. Not since Wallace Stevens has America produced a poet as complex and varied as he is accessible. This collection is a must for any serious reader of American poetry."

Parker’s poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and four fellowships from state art councils. His poems have been published in American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Pleiades, The Yale Review and The Paris Review, among other magazines. His prose appears regularly in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Parker, who has made two previous visits to Monmouth, co-edited "The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse" with Mark Willhardt, associate professor of English at Monmouth, and he was North American editor of "The Routledge Who’s Who in 20th-Century World Poetry" (also edited by Willhardt).

While on campus, Parker will also lecture in various classes and present a workshop. In addition to his writing career, he teaches at Davidson College, where he is the director of the creative writing program, and at Queens University.