Loew's Triboro: Poems

By John Allman

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811215776
• ISBN13: 9780811215770
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 101 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.9" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Real Sense of Place...

John Allman read at the West Side YMCA's Writer's Voice on April 16, 2004. This is from my introduction to the event. John Allman's poems always provide the reader with a clear sense of place, of time, of mood and ambiance. But in "Loew's Triboro," these senses are heightened, focused. With the familiarity only skill and experience can command, John Allman provides layer after telling layer of detail--vivid names of stores like Sal's Gorcery and Hubert's Flea Circus and of course Loew's Triboro Theatre itself. John Allman has the ability to lead the reader where he wants them to go--if only then to plunge them down unexpected alleys, whether through sudden violence, or into comradeship and affection. Always with a sense of movement, of events shaping lives, John Allmans' "Loew's Triboro" is a brilliant work.