John Allman (poet)
John Allman | |
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Born | 1935 (age 88–89) |
Education | |
Occupation | Poet |
John Allman (born 1935 in New York City), also known as Jack Allman, is an American poet.
Life
The son of John King Allman and Helen Burghard, and the eldest of five children, John Allman spent his early childhood in the
Work
Algorithms (prose poems), John Allman's eighth book-length collection of poetry, was published in 2012 by Quale Press. His previous poetry book was Lowcountry (New Directions, 2007).[2] His first book, Walking Four Ways in the Wind, was published in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets (Princeton University Press, 1979). Subsequent poetry books include Clio's Children (1985), Scenarios for a Mixed Landscape (1986), Curve Away From Stillness: Science Poems (1989) and Loew’s Triboro (2004) (declared a Best Book of 2004 in The Bloomsbury Review), all published by New Directions, which also published Allman’s first fiction collection, Descending Fire & Other Stories (1994). The Wallace Stevens Society Press published his Inhabited World: New & Selected Poems 1970–1995 in 1995. Allman's latest book is a new collection of short stories, A Fine Romance, to be published by Quale Press in 2015.
His
The recipient of a
Reviews
"Allman is among the first rank of American poets –– he holds his place for his consistently fine ventures into new forms and ways of seeing." ––The Bloomsbury Review
"..the lyric mode proves him to be a poet of rare expansiveness and imaginative gifts." – Publishers Weekly on Scenarios for a Mixed Landscape
Curve Away From Stillness "...is a book for people who have time for reading, and re-reading, and closing the book and taking it up again, perhaps with colored pencils to trace the complexity of the metaphor webs, the Shandean simultaneities, the recitatives, the arias, the ensembles... . it is a love poem, and the complex and delicate metaphoric structure of the book, taken as a whole, is the lover's dance between the beloved and the universe."[4]
"Allman uses the formal powers of verse to bring shapeliness and elegance to the random mess of his own remembered experience.... Loew's Triboro is an eloquent meditation on the way mind, body, language, and desire get infused with the ghostliness of popular culture, stories and pictures inhaled in the dark.;" ––Michigan Quarterly Review
"[Allman] handles his narratives the way somebody might set about untying a formidably knotted piece of rope, grabbing hold of an end and following it back and forth, under and over as it twists and turns on itself, but never losing sight of the fact that the thing is finally, all one piece." ––The Washington Post on Descending Fire and Other Stories
"Allman goes back and forth between specificity and grand statement effortlessly, as though the speaker is not so much part of the landscape—the weather, the birds, the grains of sand we feel beneath our toes—as he embodies it. As our masterful author puts it at the end of 'Watching Weather' as he watches snow on TV, the poems resemble a lake effect, 'careless as the kiss of a stranger.'"-- Bloomsbury Review on Lowcountry[5]
"I say this rarely about contemporary poetry books: Inhabited World is a truly major collection."—Dick Allen, American Book Review
Praise for Algorithms: "John Allman is master of the packed, surprise phrase, the sharp insight, intense articulated moment. From 'prickings of consciousness' which
Awards
- 1976 Helen Bulls Prize from Poetry Northwest
- 1983 Pushcart Poetry Prize
- 1984, 1990 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry
Bibliography
- "Caught in the Net FEATURED POET -JOHN ALLMAN", Poetry Kit, Guest Editor – Dan Masterson
- Walking four ways in the wind. Princeton University Press. 1979. ISBN 978-0-691-01359-6.
- Clio's children: Dostoevsky at Semyonov Square and other poems. New Directions Publishing. 1985. ISBN 978-0-8112-0935-9.
- Scenarios for a mixed landscape. New Directions Publishing. 1986. ISBN 978-0-8112-0989-2.
- Curve away from stillness: science poems. New Directions Publishing. 1989. ISBN 978-0-8112-1081-2.
- Descending fire & other stories. New Directions Publishing. 1994. ISBN 978-0-8112-1274-8.
- Inhabited world: new & selected poems, 1970–1995. Wallace Stevens Society Press. 1995. ISBN 978-0-9648056-0-6.
- Loew's triboro: poems. New Directions Publishing. 2004. ISBN 978-0-8112-1577-0.
- Lowcountry: poems. New Directions Publishing. 2007. ISBN 978-0-8112-1710-1.
Algorithms: prose poems Quale Press 2012
External links
- John Allman Papers at Syracuse University
- Q&A with John Allman at ConnotationPress.com
- John Allman featured at Caught in the Net
- John Allman in 2River
- John Allman chapbook in Mudlark
- Biographical sketch and links to some poems, Blackbird, Vol. 4, No. 1
- "Darlene Descending", Storyglossia No. 22
- Jon D. Markman, "He Takes Poetry in New Directions", Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1985
References
- ^ John Allman Papers, Syracuse University.
- ^ Ron Slate, "On the poetry of John Allman: Lowcountry".
- ^ Attractions: Prose poems by John Allman, 2River Chapbook Series Number 18.
- ^ Review of Allman's Curve Away from Stillness, Beloit Poetry Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 36–38.
- ^ Daniel Nester, Review of Allman's Low Country Archived January 21, 2013, at archive.today, Bloomsbury Review, July 30, 2008.