The New American Poetry, 1945-1960 (edited by Donald M. Allen, 1912-2004).
Donald Merriam Allen (1912 - August 29, 2004) was an influential editor, publisher, and translator of contemporary American literature.
Life[]
Allen was born in Iowa.
Allen began his career, in part, as a translator. He was an early translator of French-Romanian Absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, and his 1958 volume Four Plays of Eugène Ionesco helped to introduce the playwright to American audiences in the 1960s.
Allen is perhaps best known for his project The New American Poetry,1945-1960 (1960), among the several important anthologies of contemporary American innovative writing he made available to the public.
Allen's impact as an editor, publisher, and friend to poets continued to be felt well into the 21st century. Along with editing work by Lew Welch, Allen edited Frank O'Hara, including the seminal Collected Poems (1971; 1991) and a Selected Poems (1974). He is referred to directly in O'Hara's "Personal Poem" which is in Lunch Poems, a book Allen also edited. O'Hara says, in reference to a conversation he had with LeRoi Jones, "we don't like Lionel Trilling / we decide, we like Don Allen."
Allen served as the CEO of Grey Fox Press, publishing important work by Jack Spicer along with such volumes as Enough Said (1980) by Philip Whalen and I Remain (1980), a collection of Welch's letters.
While working with the Four Seasons Foundation, Allen assisted in the publication of (among others): Interviews (1980) by Edward Dorn, A Quick Graph: Collected Notes and Essays (1970) by Robert Creeley, and The Graces (1983) by Aaron Shurin. In 1997, he helped edit, along with Benjamin Friedlander, the Collected Prose of Charles Olson (University of California Press).
He died in San Francisco.
See also[]
External links[]
- Great Anthology: The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 article at the Academy of American Poets
- Whose New American Poetry? article by Marjorie Perloff
- Tribute to Donald M. Allen at Empty Mirror Books
- Jacket Magazine tribute by Kevin Killian
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