Dick Allen
Dick Allen was an influential poet and educator, known for his contributions to the genre of Expansive Poetry and his unique approach to traditional poetic forms. Born in Troy, New York, in 1939, he grew up in Round Lake and was shaped by a family background rich in literature and history. Allen graduated from Syracuse University in 1961 and later pursued graduate studies at Brown University, though he left before completing his PhD to start a teaching career at Wright State University.
His poetic journey saw him experimenting with traditional forms while tackling contemporary world events, culminating in the creation of the Space Sonnets. Notably, after a pivotal meeting in New York City, Allen became a principal founder of the Expansivist movement, which aimed to break away from the insular nature of American poetry. Over his career, he received numerous prestigious awards, including the New Criterion Poetry Prize in 2013 and served as Connecticut’s poet laureate from 2010 to 2015. Allen's legacy as a poet and educator continued until his passing in 2017, leaving behind a significant impact on the literary community.
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Dick Allen
- Born: August 8, 1939
- Place of Birth: Troy, New York
- Died: December 26, 2017
- Place of Death: Bridgeport, Connecticut
Biography
Born in Troy, New York, Richard Stanley Allen grew up in tiny Round Lake, a community of leased summer cottages outside Albany. Allen’s father, who served as Round Lake’s postmaster, was an extraordinary man. He was a high school dropout who never earned a great deal of money, but the elder Allen was also an amateur historian of considerable accomplishment: He won a Guggenheim Award, led the state Bicentennial Commission, and authored seven books. Allen’s mother, another high school dropout, maintained a keen interest in American literature.
While attending Syracuse University, Allen was introduced to science fiction, the New Criticism movement, and an aspiring writer named Lori Negridge, whom Allen married in 1960. After graduating from Syracuse in 1961 with a degree in English composition and creative writing, Allen enrolled in the graduate English program at Brown University.
The birth of a son, Richard Negridge Allen, in 1963, obliged Allen to leave Brown to take a job teaching creative writing at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He was three credits short of a PhD, but he never returned to Brown. Allen left Wright State in 1968 to take a job teaching English and creative writing at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. At Bridgeport, Allen rekindled his interest in science fiction, beginning the book-length sonnet sequence known as the Space Sonnets.
Reacting against the free verse and the confessional mode then popular with his contemporaries, Allen began to experiment with traditional poetic form and to concentrate on world events in a manner that would lead to a style that came to be known as Expansive Poetry. The birth of his daughter Tanya Angell in 1971 prompted a move to larger quarters, a tranquil cottage in Thrushwood Lake, Connecticut, where Allen established a permanent residence.
A decade later, a meeting at the Minetta Tavern in New York City with poets Frederick Turner and Frederick Fierstein resulted in the establishment of a school of Expansivist poetry that rejected the traditionally insulated, academic world of American poetry. After retiring from teaching in 1999, Allen found inspiration in Zen Buddhism and continued his experimentation with poetic form: He explored the iambic form in the 2003 collection, The Day Before: New Poems. Allen’s awards are many and include a 1962 Academy of American Poets Prize, the 1965 award of the Hart Crane memorial fellowship, Poetry magazine’s Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Prize for poetry in 1970, the Robert Frost Fellowship in poetry at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in 1972, the San Jose National Bicentennial Poetry Prize in 1976, and the New Criterion Poetry Prize in 2013.
From 2010 to 2015, he served as the poet laureate of Connecticut. Allen described himself as “perhaps the only American 'science fiction’ poet in captivity,” but his reputation rests on his status as principal founder of the Expansivist movement and prime practitioner of its outward, subject-oriented narrative methods. He died in Bridgeport of a heart attack in 2017 at the age of seventy-eight, survived by his wife, their son and daughter, and a grandson.
Bibliography
"Dick Allen." Academy of American Poets, poets.org/poet/dick-allen. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
"Dick Allen." Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/dick-allen. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Dunne, Susan. "Dick Allen, a Connecticut Poet Laureate, Dies at 78." Hartford Courant, 27 Dec. 2017, www.courant.com/entertainment/arts-theater/hc-obit-dick-allen-poet-1228-story.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.
Yezzi, David. "Dick Allen, 1939–2017." The New Criterion, Feb. 2018, www.newcriterion.com/issues/2018/2/dick-allen-19392017. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.