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"Allen's is poetry for goths of all ages ... There is a long tradition of poetry dealing with the uncanny — think Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' or Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' — and it's nice to see someone putting it to such use again. Allen's poems ... do a fine job of making the human scary and the scary human."
— The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The literary equivalent of a Caravaggio painting, where light is bright and casts all the more shadow for its brilliance .... Fantastical places like the REM Sleep Factory, the belly of the enigmatic Time Shark, the Gates of Hell, and even the Apocalypse itself; these and others are not dark places but places where light and darkness intermingle to cast long, clawed shadows."
— The Pedestal Magazine

Strange Wisdoms of the Dead spans ten years of my career. It's more than 150 pages, with 54 poems (including the one translated into Greek that's on the stones on the cover) and four short stories focused on dark fantasy and the surreal. The book is divided into four sections: krypta (secrets); chresthenta (epiphanies); deina (horrors); and diauliai (duets). Each section ends with a story, and the final section includes collaborations with Anita Allen (my wife), Charles Saplak, Christina Sng and Sonya Taaffe. The book includes my Rhysling Award-winning poem "The Strip Search," as well as three Rhysling runner-ups ("A Ghost Story," "How I Will Outwit the Time Thieves," "The Night Watchman Dreams His Rounds at the REM Sleep Factory.") Some of the contents were selected from two of my previous collections, Defacing the Moon and Petting the Time Shark, but many of the poems have not been collected before, and several are original to the book. Three of the stories have not been collected previously, and one is published in the book for the first time.
It's my hope that if you check it out, you'll find you have a wild ride in store, and I hope you do check it out. If you want signed copies, you can buy them here. The cover price is $15. If you buy them straight from me, I'll include the shipping in the $15.



Contents

I. KRYPTA
  • THE STRANGE WISDOM OF THE DEAD
  • THE PSYCHIC ABOVE BURRITOVILLE
  • FUNERAL PIE
  • THE DREAM EATERS
  • THE STRIP SEARCH
  • saecula saeculorum
  • cotillion in shards
  • une petite morte
  • BIZARREMOST BAZAAR
  • GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
  • A GHOST STORY
  • THE ROMANTIC AGE
  • THE UNSEELIE TREE
  • that strange man with the green petunias
  • THE CLAIRVOYANT, BETWEEN DARK AND DREAM
  • HUMPTY

    II. CRESTHENTA
  • JARS
  • MORSE CODE
  • A CURTAIN OF STARS
  • PETTING THE TIME SHARK
  • DEFACING THE MOON
  • COSMIC EGO
  • GODSPORE
  • PHASE SHIFT
  • MOMENTUM
  • PULSE
  • desolvation
  • METAREBELLION
  • APOTHEOSIS
  • THE BEST OF ALL PROBABLE WORLDS
  • HOW I WILL OUTWIT THE TIME THIEVES
  • SPACE WAR
  • PSYCHOSPACE SINGULARITY
  • EATING THE TIME SHARK
  • BETWEEN STANZAS

    II. DEINA
  • THE NIGHT WATCHMAN DREAMS HIS ROUNDS AT THE REM SLEEP FACTORY
  • HE WINDOWS BREATHE
  • THIRD SHIFT AT THE PLASTEEL SPIDER FACTORY
  • THE INTERVIEW
  • THE NIGHT GARDENERS
  • IN A PAST LIFE, I AM A WARLOCK'S SEVERED HEAD
  • THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF A SEVERED NECK
  • HOST
  • MOTHER
  • PATRICIDE
  • DEATH OF THE FATHER
  • THE ELDERS
  • THE EYEWISH STATION
  • AN EVENING STROLL
  • AT THE END
  • finale
  • LET THERE BE DARKNESS

    IV. DIAULIAI
  • ARANEA (with Sonya Taaffe)
  • TRANSFORMATIONS (with Christina Sng)
  • BLOODSPELL (with Anita Allen)
  • ASUNDER (with Christina Sng)
  • STRANGE WISDOMS OF THE DEAD (with Charles M. Saplak)