Dick Allen (poet)

Dick Allen
Born	8 August 1939 Troy, New York
Occupation	Poet, literary critic
Nationality	American
Literary movement	Expansive Poetry Zen Poetry
Notable awards	Robert Frost Prize

Dick Allen (born August 8, 1939) is an American poet, literary critic and academic. From July 1, 2010, through June 30, 2015, he served as Connecticut's poet laureate. Allen has retired from his position as Charles A. Dana Endowed Chair Professor at the University of Bridgeport. He has been co-editor of several anthologies of science fiction and science fiction criticism.^[1] His book Overnight in the Guest House of the Mystic was a finalist for the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.^[2] He is one of the founders of the Expansive Poetry movement. His influences include Ralph Waldo Emerson, A.E. Housman, Ben Jonson, Robert Frost^[3]

His poems have appeared in journals including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, The Hudson Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Yale Review, Boulevard, The Gettysburg Review, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, and The New Criterion.^[1]

Books

• Present Vanishing (Sarabande Books, 2008)
• The Day Before: New Poems (Sarabande Books, 2003)
• Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected (Sarabande, 1997)
• Flight and Pursuit (Louisiana State University Press)
• Overnight in the Guest House of the Mystic (Louisiana State University Press)
• Regions With No Proper Names (St. Martin's Press)
• Anon and Various Time Machine Poems (Dell)

Awards and recognition

• Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, Overnight in the Guest House of the Mystic, 1984
• Robert Frost Prize
• Hart Crane Poetry Prize
• Pushcart Prize
• New Criterion Poetry Prize, This Shadowy Place, 2013.^[4]
• Poems included in:
  • The Best American Poetry volumes for 1991, 1994, 1998, 1999 and 2006
  • Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry (1999)
• Poetry writing fellowships:
  • National Endowment for the Arts
  • Ingram Merrill Foundation

See also

• Expansive Poetry

Notes

1. Dick Allen, Space Sonnets segment, Skeltonics for Poets and Others
2. "All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists". National Book Critics Circle. Retrieved March 24, 2016.
3. "Dick Allen". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved March 24, 2016.
4. Dick Allen wins 2013 New Criterion Poetry Prize by Brian P. Kelly - The New Criterion

External links

• Dick Allen's Home Page
• Online biographical sketch
• Essay on "Expansive poetry" by Dick Allen
• "A Day in the Life of Dick Allen", Cortland Review

Sources

• Dick Allen

Poems online

• "For My 60th Birthday" and "Tone Poem In A Small Forest Clearing"
• "On Tenterhooks"
• "The Weeks Before"
• "The Lost Children", "Skeletonics for Poets and Others"
• "As If I Wasn't There"
• "Elvis," "Rats"
• "France"
• "Grandfather"