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	Strange Wisdoms of the Dead Mike Allen Wildside Press, 2006 - 156 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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In fire. In ice. In howls of laughter or tears of madness. As a flip cosmic joke or a tragedy of love destroyed. In private agony or sweeping apocalypse. In our ignorance we turn to the dead for enlightenment, but even they despair of the answer.

In STRANGE WISDOMS OF THE DEAD, award-winning poet Mike Allen's first book-length collection, the mysticism of tarot fuses with the magic of the Mayans, and childhood nightmares caress your face in the middle of the night. A playful kick sends Earth out of orbit, plots to steal time are thwarted, windows pulse with ghostly breath. The sacrifice of a daughter damns the world, and the dead struggle to communicate a fate beyond all understanding.

These poems and stories, spanning a 10-year career on the cutting edge of the alternative press, take you through bends in reality to bring you to places you've never imagined.

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Poetry for people who are afraid to try poetry


While most poetry evokes the stale drudgery of a high school English class, there are some new poets out there churning out work that's as fresh as an ocean breeze.

Take Mike Allen's "Strange Wisdoms of The Dead" for example. This slim paperback, a collection of Allen's work over the past 10 years, is filled with beautiful and haunting poems about ghosts and aliens, secrets and horrors.

Allen, whose poem "The Strip Search" won the 2006 Rhysling Award, speculative poetry's highest honor, is a writer to watch in the future. He effortlessly weaves elements of fantasy and science fiction with moments of everyday life, making his verses at once dreamlike and recognizable.

"The Strip Search," is a good example of this. Inspired by Allen's frustration with post- 9/11 security at his day job, a courts reporter in Virginia, the poem evokes a metal detector at the gates of Hell.

But instead of weapons, the device detects hope. Although the main character insists he's abandoned all his hope, the Gate still pings. A "slithering guard" subjects him to a horrible search:

"Its crusted hide was a Venus landscape up close.

It brushed that cold black wand all over my skin,

put it in places I don't want to talk about.

C'mere, it hissed,

it seems you're still holding out hope."

Like many of Allen's poems, "The Strip Search" has elements of humor too, leaving the reader with a gasp and a smile.

While there are a few longer pieces in the book, including four quirky short stories, most of the works in "Strange Wisdoms of The Dead" can be devoured in the time it takes to down a frozen margarita, and produce the same pleasantly disorienting buzz.

This is one book that can be savored in short bites all summer long.

It would be a perfect starter tome for anyone who's afraid to try poetry, or wants to spark a young person's interest in verse with something less boring than all the nature and suicide-themed poems assigned in literature classes.

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recommendations

Out there poetry/sci fi, horror, etc.
Books by Mike Allen

strange

	Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell: A Novel A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World Stranger in a Strange Land Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt ...

dead

	Dead as a Doornail (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 5) Definitely Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 6) From Dead to Worse (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 8) Living Dead in Dallas (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 2) Club Dead (Southern Vampire Mysteries, Book 3)