"Elegant and raunchy, tender and brutal, musically, visually, and erotically ravishing, Greg Allendorf's work is everything I want poetry to be, and I will read this volume again and again."
--Aliki Barnstone, author of "Bright Body"
"It's April now, " complains Allendorf's speaker, "and still no desperate gift of unreturned yearning."
The poems of "Fair Day in An Ancient Town" subvert the glorious, Romantic pastoral into a voice easy to imagine as Walt Whitman's darkly clever younger brother. The object of affection is fake-tanned and an idiot but still crashes a dozen lush masturbatory fantasies--or the speaker and his lover meet as shepherds only to eat M&Ms and abandon each other on bingo night. "O, the way his mouth confounded me / and folded on my mouth there in the fold, " slyly sings one of Allendorf's shepherd's songs, "O, the glory of his hairy arms, / the way they lit my eyes a little then."
Layering complex form, rhyme, and craft over lush horniness and hard wit, Allendorf effortlessly upends romantic poetry and exposes it to the twenty-first century. This is a collection to make the reader laugh out loud and think deep--and then find a way to be alone under the covers.
"With uncommon linguistic acuity . . .] and a delightfully original voice, Greg Allendorf offers up poems that speak--and continue speaking--genuine longing, and the insistent ache of love. These are necessary poems for our young century."
--Scott Cairns, author of "Idiot Psalms"