Rubber Time

Over his last three books, Terry Allen, has achieved a flawless melding of serious subject matter and wit that often spills over into laughter. Rubber Time, his fourth book, brings the reader to that level of comedic catharsis that is so rare in contemporary poetry. So when the “rubber hits the road,” we run into the poem “Contemplating Frost,” which is a reflection on Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. This iconic 20th Century poem that is most remembered for one line that readers might love, might remember, might have overheard because they never read/the poem in the first place/or were only forced to read/it once in high school,/under great protest,/since, after all, it is a poem. Allen calls us out for resisting the wisdom and the humor that is found throughout poetry and his poems.

—Walter Bargen, first Poet Laureate of Missouri and author of Too Late to Turn Back

Gentle surprise is a defining element of these poems that present mystery and welcome side by side, sometimes in the same line. Terry Allen’s Rubber Time is both expansive and accessible—a very good combination, in my opinion. Written with a voice that carries the reader with comfort and confidence into Jakarta, onto the Titanic, into the inner lives of compelling characters, and along a path of meditation that never ceases to provoke reflection. This is a collection of fascinating stories, discomfiting bits of wisdom, and disarmingly open-hearted confidings.

—Chad Parmenter, award winning poet and author of Weston’s Unsent Letters to Modotti

Terry Allen’s new poetry book, Rubber Time, offers super stretchy and highly elastic poetic themes and stories. A dramatist, Allen demonstrates that time holds memories and stories that span spacetime. His poems are well-crafted narratives that tug on the heart with their irony, humor, and compassion as the crux of every good story, as a dramatist knows, is tragedy swinging on the same pendulum as comedy. Though memories become ghosts in a world of shadow and shade, we can relate to the keen presence of universal truth in what is Allen’s best poetry collection to date.

—Barbara Harris Leonhard, author of Amazon best-selling Three-Penny Memories: A Poetic Memoir and Editor of MasticadoresUSA