Allen, Robert Edward 1946-2006

Sad news from Montréal today – Robert Allen has passed away. He was a friend and a highly intelligent poet whom I admired. How fortunate we have been to have him and how much we will miss him. Rob’s final volume of poetry - The Encantadas, published by Conundrum Press just this fall - is one of the very few books I brought with me to Wyoming. I am glad to have it here, its verses so very much alive.

I reproduce here, without permission, but with respect and gratitude, one of my favourite of Rob’s poems, a sonnet from Standing Wave (Véhicule Press, 2005):

SONNET OF WHEN I WAS YOUNG
by Robert Allen

When I was young, in Britain, I lived in a stone house
five hundred years old. Water condensed on the bedroom
walls. I slept with a hot water bottle. The only

heat came from a coal fire, whose chimney was cleaned
by and old-time chimney sweep. But in the backyard
a Roman villa gradually came to light, tile floors with blue

decoration. A skeletal cat emerged from the clay too,
Roman or more recent I couldn’t know. It fired my thoughts
to rest atop a midden of old lives, so that when I came

to North America, the dirt seemed clean and uninvolved.
There were no ghosts in the wilderness. I felt then, and still
do, like a child in a home for waifs, stripped of all

my stories. So one day I threw a small handful of Roman
coins into a field nearby, to be some other kid’s history.
. . . . .