Mudlark No. 37 (2008)
from Older Than Our Fathers
Poems by John Allman
Author’s Note: These poems are from a collection that is a meditation on history and time in an autobiographical framework of fathers and sons, in eight parts, covering a period from 1912 to the present. Parts 1, 3, 5 and 7 consist of sequences of decasyllabic unrhymed sonnets in the voices of sons and fathers. The other sections contain longer poems, some of which are included here from Parts 2, 4, 6 and 8. The poem “And Then The Darkness,” which appears in Part 4 of the book, is here included as the last poem among those selected from Part 8.
Older Than Our Fathers, when completed, will be John Allman’s eighth book of poems. His recent collections of poetry include Lowcountry (2007) (from which a Mudlark chapbook was selected) and Loew’s Triboro (2004), published by New Directions, which has done most of his books, including Descending Fire & Other Stories (1994). He has recently completed his second collection of stories, A Fine Romance, stories from which have appeared in the online journals Blackbird and Storyglossia, as well as Michigan Quarterly Review. Poems from Older Than Our Fathers have been published in New York Quarterly, Hotel Amerika and Ashville Poetry Review.
Photo montage cover by Eileen Allman
Contents
from Part 2
In The First Place
Nocturne
The Frolicking Friars
Today
First Job 1928
Happy Days
from Part 4
1942
Rationing
Your Life Twice
Part Time
from Part 6
Working The List
The Weak Force
In The Lecture Hall
Genesis
Brothers
DNA
The Sighting
from Part 8
Nature
A Common Year
Angina
The Eyes Of Others
The Gory Details
The Moon Receding With Explosives
Strapped To Its Waist
And When Darkness
Taking A Look