
(Click here for a sample) |
M.
Ray Allen's first published
collection was The Roads I
Travel (Troy, Maine:
Nightshade Press 1990), a brief
chapbook containing nineteen
poems. Those poems, like
these of Between the Thorns,
affirm that Appalachia is
Allen's primal experience.
Seconding the importance of
Appalachia to him is the fact
that he founded and serves as
president of Appalfolks of
America Association, a
non-profit organization serving
Appalachia and dedicated to
improving the literacy and
drop-out rate by promoting
drug-free creativity in literacy
and performing arts.
"Writing", Allen
says, "provides me with a stay
against the madness of this
world." He thinks of
himself as "an image maker" and
his writing as his "umbilical
link to the world" that both
reconstructs his perceptions and
strips away superficiality.
His down-home voice vividly
rises above the winds of time as
he retraces his passage through
time, space, and memory to
recreate an intimate and
immediate reality.
Allen's
restlessness and resignation,
his deep-rooted melancholy and
hope, echoes every human's
search for meaning. His
poetry captures his center of
being with a familiar tenderness
and pictures for us a human
experience we recognize as our
own. "I write," Allen
states, "because to do otherwise
would be to accept defeat."
(Click here to see M. Ray
Allen's bio) |
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M. Ray Allen
wrestles with time change, and
forces beyond his control.
Passionate in his search for
higher purpose, he stretches
moments into meaning and
message. We find with this
seasoned poet a sweet release
along the way
- Connie
Lackey Martin, editor Nostalgia
magazine
Orangeburg,
South Carolina
"Beyond Star
Bottom" is a trip across a wild
and cerebral prairie...a
testament to all those who will
not settle for the mediocrity of
life.
- John M.
Clarke, fiction writer and
publisher
Meadowview,
Virginia |
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DiMAGGIO SMILES I am leaving
San Francisco again
without having ridden a cable
car;
DiMaggio smiles away the
years
leaving me beside railroad
tracks
batting stones with
broomstick;
DiMaggio at the plate
striding
swinging
driving the ball
high above cheering willows
beyond an outfield of
cornstalks
across the creek. Home
run!
Another game is won
as I climb steep street hills
again
above that bay
where DiMaggio smiles away
the years.
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