BUY MY BOOKS
Type Dancing is a continuation of David Allen’s previous collections, The Story So Far, and (more). The poems span his lifetime, and many were published in small magazines, websites, and anthologies. Most of them are stories, a sharing of David’s experiences as a sailor, student and holder of a dozen odd jobs before starting his 36-year career in journalism in Virginia, Indiana and the Far East. He now lives in Central Indiana, where he is Vice President and Contest Director for the Poetry Society of Indiana and hosts Open Mic Poetry Nights.
My second book of poetry, “(more)’ is now available on Amazon Kindle. The paperback edition is also available. If you want a signed copy, email me at david@davidallen.nu. Order your copy today! I am like most poets — poor.
Here’s a review:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wanting (more), September 2, 2014
By Jenny A. Kalahar “the_story_shop” (Elwood, IN USA)
Here are wonderful, literate poems of longing, wit, wisdom and resistance; justice, injustice, the absurdities of life and of growing older. There are lines full of sensuality at every stage of our existence, and of the waste and usefulness around us. Tinged with the atmosphere of the Orient, they are as luxurious as legs that go all the way up. Mr. Allen’s years as a newspaper man stain his poems with a rougher ink that sticks to your fingers long after you’ve turned his pages. There are losses – parents, loved ones, friends – but there are poems of finding and creating. Children, grandchildren, lovers, partners in crime and art all swirl throughout this collection, humming like a secret humming song. But unlike most hummed songs, these words do matter. They do. So read them now and sing along.
AND HERE’S MY FIRST BOOK
Like my poetry? Then buy my book, “The Story So Far,” published by Writers Ink Press, Long Island, N.Y. You can find it on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Story-So-Far-David-Allen/dp/0925062480/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397184666&sr=1-13&keywords=the+story+so+far) in paperback and Kindle formats, or by sending me $10 at:
David Allen
803 Avalon Lane
Chesterfield, IN 46017
Here’s what Fulbright Poet and former Suffolk County N.Y. Poet Laureate David Axelrod had to say in the book’s preface:
Poets are allowed to make lists to tell us their “Story So Far,” as long as it’s an interesting list. David Allen’s is and thus, so are his poems—a good life that makes a good read. American poets, in other countries, are sometimes chided for taking even little details from their lives and turning them into poetry. That’s a large part of the art that David Allen has mastered—solidly, happily in the American tradition.
Allen is not averse to autobiography, not needing that mask of fiction behind which so many artists hide. Of course that is true in his title poem which catalogs his personal journey. It is most poignant in poems such as “Requiem for My Father,” which recites a litany of pain and in so doing purges the past, leaving a “demon-less Dad.” He writes to atone for the fact that “I Never Wrote a Poem About My Mother,” creating a poem even more powerful because it celebrates a life that was so often bullied into a position of powerlessness.
Allen’s poems are a often a plain song in performance of a homey philosophy. For those who search for god, “In the Country” asks “if god/ is afraid of the dark.” In “No Sense,” we contemplate a god who “is either/ absent minded,/ a practical joker,/ or a sadist.” His “Meaning” is something you can “put…in your pocket…go off whistling/ down the street.”
“Anticipation,” delights us with music “like a cool chill on a steaming/ day of city summer stranger streets.” “Nightmares,” turns philosophy into a song, something Allen may have learned from his father who “plays the mandolin/ when life begins to close him in.” Allen even has moments one could liken to Emily Dickinson, as in “Underneath.”
The Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Louis Simpson, himself inclined to cataloging the oddities of “American Poetry,” has also noted that many poets seem to want to be novelists. Allen himself, in “The Final Chapter,” promises “No more novel, play or poem similes.” Luckily, he contradicts this pronouncement many times in this book. His relaxed lines and narrative tendencies might remind you of “novel.” In truth, he has a professional journalist’s talent for writing good lead lines, a poet’s ear for music and the strong endings of a story writer. Blending forms, he is a poet who more than gives us—he gifts us his life in poetry!
He explains his modus operandi in “Running” noting how writing has been his refuge and salvation even as “book walls crumbled/ and, crippled, I learned to crawl.” Indeed, he’s gone much further than that humble admission in the Story So Far. He puts a well-earned, positive slant on his accomplishments in “Seesaw Sensations,” exclaiming “Ah, so this is living.” Hooray for David Allen’s courage, creativity and poetry!
David B. Axelrod, Fulbright Poet
http://www.poetrydoctor.org
And if that doesn’t convince you, here’s what my friend and excellent poet/novelist Jenny Anderson Kalahar had to say:
“David Allen concludes one of his poems with the words, “Maybe nothing will happen tomorrow”, as if hoping for a break from the newsy world he lives in. But I don’t believe he really wants that, or ever will. His poetry is stuffed full of happenings, history, mayhem, madness, joy, frustration, disillusion, death, life and love and the things that happen to us all as we slog through our own daily editions. There are masterpieces here: The Names, My Howl, and I Never Wrote a Poem About My Mother. There are small gatherings of words that are eaten quickly, but that stay in your teeth like raspberry seeds, persistent and clinging, daring you to suck them out for one last bite. And there are lengthy poems that make you slow down, that make you match your breathing to its rhythm, and that make you absorb and roll right into the story. We readers can only hope that what will follow The Story So Far will be . . . More.”
Type Dancing 