Loew's Triboro: Poems - Softcover

Allman, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811215776 ISBN 13: 9780811215770

Publisher: New Directions, 2004

Synopsis

An evocative, often mischievous remembrance and reinvention by the poet of his youth in the New York City of the '40s and '50s. In Loew's Triboro, John Allman's fourth collection of poems with New Directions, the poet recalls the movie palace in Astoria, Queensone of the five boroughs of New York Cityand its centrality to the lives and fantasies of the people in the neighborhood. In a combination of prose poems and free verse, sometimes darkly funny, Allman juxtaposes vignettes from the streets of Astoria with the movies of the period, revisioning such film noir classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and The Asphalt Jungle. The book itself becomes a narrative place where real and cinematic lives interact, where movies are the engines of history and myth and the motif of journey is implicit from the first poem to the last.

About this title

About the Author:

John Allman (1935- ) is a contemporary American poet and novelist who spent his childhood in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. In 1943 he moved with his to Astoria, Queens, where he attended William Cullen Bryant High School until dropping out in 1952. He earned his diploma at night school while working as a laboratory technician in the product control labs of Pepsi-Cola. He then enrolled in Brooklyn College, as a pre-med student, but later transferred to Hunter College in the Bronx. After a period of time spent in California, as a technician, he settled on studying the humanities and chose to become a writer. For his MA in English literature and creative writing from Syracuse University, he studied with Donald Dike, Cecil Lang, Philip Booth and Delmore Schwartz. Allman has received The Helen Bulls Prize from Poetry Northwest, a Pushcart Poetry Prize, and two National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry (1984 and 1990). His work has been widely published in such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and The Massachusetts Review.

Review:

"Allman's imagination is capable of startling maneuvers, but he always holds to the track of the poem's subject. He is like one of those specialized pilots at airshows who can fly upside down but close to the ground."

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0811215776
• ISBN 13: 9780811215770
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96