John Allman's poems, "Lung" and "The Kidnapping," will appear in his forthcoming (spring, 2004) collection, Loew's Triboro (New Directions), dealing with movies (mostly film noir) of the 1940s and 1950s and the people of a Queens, New York, neighborhood during that period. Other poems from this collection have appeared in or will soon appear in The Yale Review, 5 AM, Crazyhorse, North Dakota Quarterly, Kestrel, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Full Circle. Allman is the author of five previous books of poetry: Walking Four Ways in the Wind (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 1979); Clio's Children (1985), Scenarios for a Mixed Landscape (1986), Curve Away from Stillness (1989), all from New Directions, and Inhabited World: New & Selected Poems 1970-1995 (The Wallace Stevens Society Press, 1995). He is also the author of a collection of fiction, Descending Fire & Other Stories (New Directions, 1994). Allman, who is retired from teaching, lives in Katonah, New York, and spends his winters on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where he is working on a collection of poems, Lowcountry, about that area.  

Photo by Don Grant