William Allen



				William Allen's enamel paintings counterbalance American folk art with hypertext. Here narrative is imputed onto steel, and so too are certain notions about the intellectual, psychological and metonymic courses a poem or story should run. The words chosen make startling or strange connections. Their hand-painted quality is subverted by their pristine surfaces, just as the sounds of words are subverted by their etymologies
		A poet and painter, Allen is the author of several books including Sevastopo: On Photographs of War (Xenos Press), 1997, and The Man on the Moon (NYU/Persea Presses, 1987). Recent poems have appeared in Chelsea Magazine, Callaloo, The American Voice, Global City Review, and Poetry East. Allen has exhibited artwork and poetry in Committed to Print at the MOMA, and in a two-person exhibition (with Barbara Westermann) at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.