Author: Allan Peterson

  • AMID THIS

    AMID THIS Forthcoming Feb.15 from ProjectPoëtica Poetry Series, SMU/Bridwell Press


    “This book is pure music of being. A gift. Allan Peterson is a national treasure. I can’t get enough of his poetry.” 

    ⏤Jesse Nathan

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  • night levis

    mixed media

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  • THIS LUMINOUS, New and Selected Poems

    Selections from five full length collections and five chapbooks. Introduction by Stephanie Burt


    Panhandler Books,University of West Florida 2019
    Front cover art by author; front cover design by Olivia Ashcraft. Editor Jonathan Fink.

    “Peterson is one of our most valuable poet-thinkers and thinker-poets, a writer who can show us how much is within our grasp and how much beyond it.” ⏤LA Review of Books

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  • BLOOD

    Everything red has some of its properties 
    carnelian alizarin a lake like other lakes 
    translucent and fugitive 
    After muskets armorers made gates and hardware 
    Running for our lives became track & field 
    Civility among the warlike never caught on 
    as did bathing in flags and fabrications 
    ritually dipping an arrow to remind the shaft 
    of its purpose 

                               ⏤ from Blackbird 

  • POSSESSION

    The poem started long before you got here 
    how far it can go and what will be left 
    after death and revisions is being decided 

    I have begun to misremember the room 
    and the date how far a rose from a rifle 
    pillow from the dream whose intensity 
    was outside the region of visible light 

    An evening without flies and no mosquitos 
    the sun once bell high now tone deaf 
    down behind the reservoir a sign of rushing 
    into the narrows that perspective is 

    What we are used to has a long history 
    Lights come on in the brilliant machinery 
    a frieze of wisteria juggling the sun’s small hands 
    We remember through our belongings 
    till all the apostrophes are gone 

                              ⏤The Gettysburg Review

  • KOI

    Koi converse in slow circles 
    of what we have not seen 
    Mercy 
    and the dark bottom of the pond 
    The recirculating pump we call 
    karma 
    is only a sound and mysterious 
    as well being 
    A comforting surrounding 
    to lives of endless destinations 

                                              ⏤The Nation

  • VIGNETTE

    There is a heartbreaking earnestness to life 
    On the midway a man was selling chameleons 
    He had many on strings pinned to his vest 
    It was Royal Stewart plaid They were trying 

                        ⏤The Literary Review 

  • OUTVOTED

    Governments are systems in which no virtue is perfected 

    no innocence preserved Once the Yanomamo met outsidrs 

    they began planning their survival This is inevitable 

    In every such discovery everyone will eventually have to dress 

    in their feathers and fly in a winged horse to the capitol to ask 

    for justice The pleadings will demonstrate how the roots 

    of the manioc have been damaged the disappearance of animals 

    and the silting of streams was like blood withdrawing from the body 

    Those with no trees and not enough parking will find the metaphors quaint

    ⏤Subtropics
     

  • THE HIDDEN

    There are moons in me 
    I have seen the x-rays 
    I glow with that light 

    Until the hidden was revealed 
    the lush given was an ecstasy 
    tempered by caution like hawks 
    crossing water 

    We have limited capacity 
    so we say infinite and think 
    we have described something 
    our shorthand for what is 
    beyond us 

    When asked why birding 
    Ellen said because 
    they let us see them 

                                          ⏤ Post Road 

  • the encroaching garden

    Drawing, ebony pencil; rubbing 22×30″

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  • LIFE AT ALL

    A limited edition chapbook published by ambidextrous bloodhound press with full color digital collages by artist Richard Fox.

    Editor Dale Wisley
    The edition is happily sold out.

  • otherthantheyseem

    Winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award, Tupelo Press, selected by Ruth Ellen Kocher


    Cover photo the author;cover design Bill Kuch

    “Soft spoken and intuitive, these deeply reflective poems demonstrate the miraculous common currency of thinking, expressed like confidences shared with a reader: “the latent world wavers between us. …” Highly visual and verbally chromatic, eschewing punctuation and rigorously open-ended, these poems pursue intimate recognitions in compact forms energized by intuitive jumps.” ⏤ Ruth Ellen Kocher

  • PRECARIOUS

    42 Miles Press Poetry Series

    Editors Choice

    “The poems in Precarious are profound and rewarding. Allan Peterson’s poetry is truly prismatic, suggesting a complex mind philosophically engaged with a
    rich world…This is Allan Peterson at his very best.” ⏤Kevin Prufer

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  • FRAGILE ACTS

    McSweeney’s Poetry Series

    National Book Critics Circle and Oregon Book Award finalist.


    “His observing eye, as astute as the most finely honed telephoto lens, is such that he’s able to transform even the most ordinary into something so exquisite it provokes wonder and awe.” ⏤ Mary Jo Bang

    “Like Brazil’s undiscovered caverns of amethyst, Allan Peterson’s Fragile Acts is a major find.” ⏤John Ashbery

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  • AS MUCH AS

    Published in Ireland by Salmon Poetry Press,


    Cover drawing the author; type & book design Michael Manoogian

    “Drawing intimately from nature, science, art, history and subjective interiors, these are exubrtent poems in which seeming and as if cannot be used up, and the distance between inner and outer dissolves.” ⏤from the back cov

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  • OMNIVORE

    Winner of the Bateau Press BOOM Chapbook Prize.


    Cover, letterpress printing and book design by Shelter Bookworks.

    “Omnivore condenses the experience of a 21st first century thinker. The poems skirt the language of philosophy, biology, starfields, and nerves. Always emotive at their root, Peterson’s poems evoke the essence of the potent unknown. Surprises resound with visual acuity, musical consonance, and leaps of intense image that reverberate line by line to fashion a riveting portrait of time.” ⏤ The Editors

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  • ALL THE LAVISH IN COMMON

    Winner of The Juniper Prize for Poetry


    Cover illustration “The Curious Chair? by the author; book design by Sally Nichols. 2006

    “More is More”
    Allan Peterson, from the dedication

    “These poems remind us that we are all in the thick of things, the rich and complicated givens.Moving fluently from subjects as diverse as the surface of Europa to a tint spider in a tear of walpaper, from Pythagoras at Tyre to the wings of a dragonfly, they are in love with the world and the deep seriousness of living.” ⏤ from the cover comments

    The University of Massachusetts Press 2006

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  • ANONYMOUS OR

    Winner of the Defined Providence Book Prize.


    Cover illustration “Sarcophagus” by W.T. Moore; cover design Spiros Zachos

    “Allan Peterson has accomplished that rare thing, he has learned how to enter ‘the ubeasy feudal kingdoms of the mind,’ and track the tactile elements of his own thoughts.” ⏤J.P.White, judge’s comment

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  • SMALL CHARITIES

    No.7 in the University of West Florida Chapbook Series 1994

    Book design and illustration, the author; editor Laurie O’Brian

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  • STARS ON A WIRE

    Parallel Editions, Institute for the Book Arts, 1989

    University of Alabama. Designed and hand printed by Jean Buscher and Sharon Long. Metalic inks, paste paper covers. Distributed by Granary Books, NYC

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