Tag Archives: allen shadow

Award-Winning Poem Featured in ‘Boomerlitmag’

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My poem Dream and Dream and Dream, which was long-listed for the 2023 Fish Publishing Poetry Prize, has been published in the highly-rated Boomerlitmag. The journal is #58 on a highly-regarded list of the top literary magazines. The ratings are based on the number of their contributors from the previous year who are selected as winners of the coveted Pushcart Prize. As an example, Paris Review is ranked #1.

Here is the link: https://boomerlitmag.com/allen-shadow-2/ and the poem is posted below.

Dream and Dream and Dream

Mama, as everything was going on
I was watching, always watching you

crossing the Bronx streets when I was five
taking my big sister to school

you were crossing me
but, really, I was crossing you

when my father would let go your hand
in the middle of a vast boulevard

when cars rumbled when trucks roared


Always, mama, always
wanting to make it better for you
even though there was no way

when Superman flew
the blind girl around the world
and she could see again

I wanted him to come break 
through the front windows 
and take you

bring you back seeing
setting you down in the little square 
living room or on the back porch

so you too could see all the 
birds and the great Oak
and then could dance 

around the corner
along Southern Boulevard
all the way to Tremont


All the places, just think, mama—
the story clouds, the platypus at the zoo,

elephants, the island in the Pacific
where, surely, you’d be a princess


Just think, we could cheat the 
night custodian to off-load all the fear

and float on the aimless wind—
the sky is loud, mama, loud


Well, I could always go to sleep, anyway
and dream and dream and dream

sometimes there’s a song you can’t know
but you can sing, nonetheless

Finalist for the Robert Day Award for Fiction

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I’ve been named a finalist for the Robert Day Award for Fiction, from the noted literary magazine New Letters. The editors are currently considering which finalist short stories it will publish in the magazine.

The short story I submitted, A Day in the City, is one of the first I began writing when, in the 1990s, I felt I finally had my fiction legs under me. I always thought it was a strong, worthy story, and as an example of how kooky discovery is in this field, the story has been rejected by magazines 52 times over the years (despite receiving very strong comments from a number of top editors). Even now, while I feel this award has validated my feelings, the story still may not be selected for publication. And, until it is, I can’t show it here or anywhere else, since it must be virginal to be considered by magazines. Tough stuff, eh? And I’ve had many similar experiences with poems, manuscripts, songs, and screenplays. Fortunately, however, in the case of poems, many that have been rejected numerous times, have finally been selected for publication. Ahh!!!

As I’ve been watching the baseball playoff games this October, I’m reminded of the fortitude required of professional baseball players. The other night it was noted how one outfielder in the game, now 28, had played in more than 700 minor league games before being called up to the majors last month.

BTW, New Letters is ranked #37 on a highly-regarded list of the top lit magazines. The ratings are based on the number of their contributors from the previous year who are selected as winners of the coveted Pushcart Prize. As an example, Paris Review is ranked #1.

I Read Your Letters, America

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For Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I offer this poem of mine

I Read Your Letters, America*

So now I know about your lies
lies you told Sitting Bull
and Chief Joseph
over and over again
before the God mountains
and sacred grass

So now I know about your bullets
and your torture
how you tore the hearts from the Lakota, the Apache and the Nez Pers
how you tried to stretch their souls onto a cross

Shame on you, America
I didn’t know my father was a thief
it will be hard now to ride in the Buick
with the top down
the radio dancing over the corpses under the highway

*Will appear in the fall edition of Waymark magazine

‘The Beautiful Winding’ Selected in Major Poetry Book Competition

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Today I learned my poetry manuscript The Beautiful Winding was recognized as an honorable mention in the 2023 Stevens Poetry Book Competition, judged by the distinguished poet Edward Hirsch, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient. In addition, he is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Last year’s winner, Nancy Hengeveld

There were three winner categories and three honorable mentions, from 249 submissions world-wide. At first blush an honorable mention might not seem like something to crow about. But it’s huge to have a manuscript recognized in this class. It’s telling you you’re not crazy, your stuff is that good, and gives you extra oomph to keep pushing for The Beautiful Winding to become a winner and to be released by a top publisher. The competition these days is stiffer than ever.

I write every day. It’s something I’ve done most of my adult life, as poet, novelist, and songwriter. That said, since I retired from my job six years ago, I’ve been able to put my shoulder into submitting my stuff—to agents, publishers, magazines, etc. I’ve had individual poems published by some of the best literary magazines. So now I can hope to become a winner in the book category, as I keep pushing.

Recent Poetry and Screenplay Wins

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Recently learned one of my poems was short-listed, and two of them long-listed, for the 2023 Fish Publishing Poetry Prize (Cork, Ireland), judged by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. Fish is doing God’s own work. It’s an inspiration and an avenue to writers everywhere. – FRANK McCOURT (Pulitzer winner, author of Angela’s Ashes)

In other news:

  1. I was selected as a finalist in the latest Poetry International Chapbook Competition for my chapbook These Are My Psalms Now, and they’ll be publishing my poem It Was the Coffee in the Mornings online. I’ll announce it,  when it goes live and post it here. Poetry International has published the likes of Seamus Heney, Carolyn Forche, Derek Walcott, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, Edward Hirsch, and Robert Bly, to name a few.
  2. My antiracist pilot “Raceless” was named Best TV Pilot/Screenplay in the thriller category at the NY Screenwriting Awards 2023, and was selected to be part of NY International Screenplay Festival 2023.
  3. My poem Green Black Waters was named a finalist for the Omnidawn Poetry Broadside Prize.

‘The Dream’: Poem Meets Painting

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As part of Emerge Gallery’s upcoming “Art & Words: Ekphrasis” exhibit — a combination of art and poetry inspired by one another — I penned the poem “Dream,” which was inspired by Loel Barr’s painting “Leaving Kansas.”

THE DREAM

The dream that
comes in the barn
in the night
with Marie
and travels the road
when no one else
is admiring the purple heaven
thinking how someday
someday it might
part for us
might take us
yes just like that
everywhere and nowhere
all at once
the dream
the dream that is Kansas

Barr_Leaving Kansas

I will read the poem at a preview of the show, slated this Saturday, May 22, at 2 p.m. at the Saugerties Library, at 91 Washington Ave. The show, which opens May 6 at 6 p.m. at Emerge Gallery, 228 Main St., Saugerties, N.Y., will run through May 29. A special reading will be held at the gallery on Saturday, May 20, from 6 to 8 p.m.

‘Poet in the City’: the Lost Gem

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The following is from Mat Danks’ Excavation Tape Project, which attempts to unearth previously undiscovered musical gems:

Excavation Tapes #267: ‘Poet in the City’ by Allen Shadow

kks-album-cover Wow, this is dark. And very cool. Listen here.

It’s a creeping, haunting yomp over some brilliantly bleak, industrial clangy instrumentation. Perhaps, like a gothic take on John Cooper Clarke with some pretty obvious touchpoints of Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

It’s from a 2002 album called ‘King Kong Serende’ and a bit of digging into Allen Shadow (see his blog here) suggests he’s a bit of a renaissance man. His Twitter bio states: “Novelist Allen Shadow (aka Allen Kovler) is also a music artist, poet, journalist & PR pro (APR) who blogs on writing, music and politics.” Which is what we like here on the Excavation Tapes.

If this project is all about unearthing really interesting and brilliant material lost in the banal mainstream crossfire, then we’ve got ourselves a gem here.

–Mat Danks

Shadow’s NY Times Story Included in ‘Best of 2015’

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The piece I wrote as part of the New York Times “Walking New York” feature last spring is included in the Times feature: “2015: Our Best Visual Stories and Graphics.” The feature is published in today’s online edition.

To find my piece, click here, scroll down to the “Walking New York” story and search “Kovler”. Or, even simpler, click here, to read it (it’s a short piece) on this blog. I wrote this one under my given name, Allen Kovler vs. my penname, Allen Shadow.
Times_Best_2015

‘Hell City’ TV Pilot is Finalist

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My Hell City TV pilot was selected as a finalist in the 2015 World Series of Screenwriting competition. Based on my novel by the same name, the pilot was chosen in the TV Drama Pilot category.
WSSC_signature_logo
Winners and finalists were chosen from more than 700 submissions worldwide. The Hell City series is based on my novel, a literary thriller about a search for homegrown jihadists, with unforgettable characters and an undercurrent of longing for a lost America. The novel can be found on Amazon.

Windy Hill

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There was the country road
went on forever
me and Leif hurling rocks
swinging sticks
on the way to town

Weeds all sweated
gravel in our sneaks
Fords occasionally
even a Packard
long enough to make us dream
would the girls all be pretty as Renee
would we fly

Dusk back at the bungalow colony
Pete the jockey took us out on Thunder
bareback in the fields
nothing but the night birds now
Vesuvius beneath us
and the orange sun

Note: Windy Hill is part of my poetry series on summer.