The Poet Barton Allen And His Fall From Literary Grace

BARTON ALLEN, the anointed and now almost forgotten poet, could still be resurrected. Well, I want to believe it is so. It is a possibility that if he fails to produce any more work of note he will soon be forgotten and classified as that one special poet with enormous talent who failed to personally take advantage of his special gifts. The question posed to us then would be, why didn't he? And to think Barton Allen once had a contract with the New York publisher Alfred Knopf, his editor and teacher was none other than the infamous Gordon Lish, and here Lish was championing Allen back in the mid nineties as the next likely successor to the other great poet he had published and championed, Jack Gilbert. And let me tell you there was no holding Lish back in his lavish praise for the work of this young man, Barton Allen.

Allen maintained he came from Cape Cod. He said his mother kept a summer home there. He claimed he spent much time near the water and any person like me could see the sensitivity in this young man and just know that his natural environment had to have a lot to do with the making of his poems. And didn't he wear a suit to class? How many young people wear suits? Especially to a Gordon Lish Fiction-Writing class?

I met Barton Allen in July of 1995 in Bloomington, Indiana. I was there for a five day intensive Lish class on the campus of Indiana University. Paula Lifschey hosted the class in Ballantine Hall, Room 344, and it began at 10:00AM on a Saturday, July 22. The class was expensive, as all of Lish's classes reportedly are. And I had never met Gordon Lish in person, but I knew I was in his presence immediately when this fellow in the hat came charging at me, to my classroom writing desk where I had arrived early and was readying myself to be the best student ever, and here was Gordon Lish fervently asking me if I had brought the check. Lish always made sure everyone had paid up before he started teaching because I quickly ascertained he doesn't take long in weeding out his class. In other words, he gets rid of people. There are students who come to a Lish class who shouldn't, he finds them, and then finds a way to get them out, all the while pocketing the cash and not offering any refund. By that time, however, they are ready to leave. So you better be a serious student wanting to learn from the master, and have enough humility to keep your own greatness to yourself. There is only room for one god at the head of his class, and this god decides who is anointed and who isn't. Barton Allen was one of the anointed, and because of that, I did take notice. But I would have anyway. The fellow walked in late, as in at least two hours late, explaining his plane had been delayed and no way could he have arrived any sooner. That was the beginning of his tales. And Barton Allen tells tall ones.

But Gordon was indifferent to Barton's reasons for his tardiness, he only wanted the poems. He asked Barton immediately, "Did you bring the poems?" And of course he did. He had them in his nice leather-bound notebook which he opened with a flourish and flashed the loose pages of his latest work into the hands of the master. Gordon immediately began reading them to himself as the rest of us enjoyed the performance, the drama being acted out robustly and with great fervor, as all of Gordon's life seems to me to be a highly-stylistic presentation of sorts. And through the years I have grown to love the man and his actions, all art, and all of the time. But Barton was ready for him too and seemed to be a collaborator of sorts in this marvelous display and interaction. Gordon was simply amazed at the quality of his poems. He raved about the next-coming who was now present in the room. Gordon found ways with his own words to circle the man-child Barton Allen, revising and revising his audacious commendations and absolute predictions in order to insure the rapt attention of all of us in the room, students all, which included the great grammatical fictionist Gary Lutz who hadn't yet at that setting published his first collection of short stories titled, STORIES IN THE WORST WAY, which did appear in 1996.

Gordon read from one loose sheet:

Father’s Body

Have cracked
open his corpse
for keeps. It is
madness getting near

to his meat.
And my love since
grows not half so sweet
as my sister’s was

when we were crouched
in the bathroom,
helping him
insert the tube.

and she winced
to the living room,
began slipping,
even his nail clippings

inside her purple crepe.

Gordon read the poem again, and again. He was clearly impressed by this poem and I was too. How could you not be? It was a brilliant piece of work. That was a moment for me when I forgot what everybody else was doing and focused my attention on everything the master had to say. Two days later he mentioned the poem again about Father's Body , that "there may have been no there", that this poem was an "artifact." Gordon said, "What makes us pay attention to something is our fear of being in its presence." God, I wanted to be that guy, Barton, but I wasn't. Plus, I was still trying to write fiction at the time and would have to contend with the likes of Gary Lutz in the room. But this story is about Barton Allen. Lutz will have to wait.

One other striking development of the initial exchange between Gordon Lish and Barton Allen when Barton entered the classroom was the respect Lish demonstrated for the young man even with him coming in late. Earlier, a student had left the room to use the bathroom and while he was gone Lish went into an animated dialogue as to why this person would never make it as a serious writer simply because he couldn't hold his water. Lish's legendary classes could go on for six to eight hours with no breaks for lunch or bathroom privileges, just the steady lecturing of the teacher non-stop. It was sort of like a boot camp for writers. These particular classes in Bloomington would instead go on between seven to eight hours each day for five days in a row, and one serious problem we faced the first day was the extremely frigid temperature in the room due to the air conditioning being set too high on cold. I learned early the first day not to drink too much liquid before class, to hold my water like a champion, and never leave the room or you would be talked about. I liked those lessons. I hadn't ever practiced a discipline before so it was not only a challenge, but a little bit fun in the same manner a good game of chess is fun.

Gordon had previously in his lecture been totally immersed in the word zinnia . What I was not aware of at the time was that he was composing a fiction that day in class and zinnia would show up in a future story of Gordon Lish's in one of his later books. I think it is important to note what he said about the word zinnia . He said zinnia was "not a flower, it is a constellation of sounds. Don't ever see beyond the word as a thing, but to another word." He went on to say, "the extent to which you think writing is about something other than words then you will fail." He also said, "If I can deprive zinnia of meaning and make it a feeling then I can control it." Gordon was certainly talking to me, but I wouldn't realize it it until about a year later. In the meantime, Barton Allen was all ears. I have notes from each day, and in particular the second day I entered Gordon's directive, underlining it, returning to it often, even today.
"You are not producing meaning. You are not communicating. You are making time."

Gordon read another loose leaf of Barton's.


The Effulgence

Where in God’s name
do we go?
I was already
as good as there.
Yes, in song, in
heart, that journey.

No one saw
the boy walk
in the June time
of his life. Or strongly.
Past bedtime before
the end of the day.


So we found out from the father Gordon Lish that the great Barton Allen had a contract with Knopf for a book of poems to be titled, THE MISS KELLY POEMS. How lucky for Barton and Knopf! How special to be in a class with him and see his emergence as a new and important poet. Barton would not attend class the next summer in Bloomington which would turn out to be the last Bloomington class for Gordon Lish. Barton did join us in Chicago the summer of 1997 for the final Lish Fiction-Writing Class ever held in the Midwest. Lish retired completely from teaching, including the famous New York classes held in Eleanor Alper's apartment on 5th Avenue, by the end of 1997. But Barton and I had become friends, talking on the telephone often for many hours at a time, he in Cape Cod and then later in Texas, myself headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. I had become completely enamored with his poetry I found in Lish's litmag The Quarterly 29 , and others. I had never seen so many poems by one person in one magazine before, Barton Allen was clearly in the camp of Gordon Lish. Over the telephone Barton would read to me new drafts of poems he was working on. We would discuss words, their sounds and feelings, and I was on a fast track to learning what the teaching of Gordon Lish was all about. If it wasn't for Barton Allen I would not be the poet I am today. Barton gave me the confidence to try new things, he helped me understand language in a most peculiar way, and I began to get comfortable with the uncanny. It was exciting to hear new poems, and one of them, the following, he said he wrote about me.


The Bounded Outward Circumference

He begins in the middle beforehand
in his work. Back at the cellar door
perhaps. That slot in it. A ventshaft,
a hollow accidentally painted yellow,
blackness as odd as noticing the end.
And a noisemaker thrown down. What shakes,
inside a baby’s glass rattle, are as bone
shavings, or rodent’s teeth, crownshaped,
like asterisks, enameled jacks. Keepsakes lost
ticks ago. But theses are after the fact.

He lifts his finger from the penlights’s clip,
reaches down and pockets the rest in case.
When he shakes his hand, lint falls.
Inquiry is more and more an answer. He responds,
Despite it all, dissecting the means, the hinge.


When Barton came to Louisville the summer of 1997 for our trip to Chicago and the last Lish class, it was obvious to me that he was struggling with his own forms of procrastination. I am not sure if all the attention bestowed on him finally took its toll, but Barton could not get the final draft to THE MISS KELLY POEMS finished. Gordon had recently been fired from Knopf, but the publishing giant was still honoring its contract with Barton Allen for his book of poems, and there were deadlines to meet. Gordon encouraged Barton to fulfill his obligations and Barton promised Gordon he would. But there were noticeable problems. Barton would keep himself up all night in Chicago, wandering the streets and hallways of the hotel, concocting fantastic stories of slipping on baby shit on the sidewalk and falling down into it and having to wear borrowed clothes from a man on the street. On our return back to Louisville Barton borrowed my wife's automobile to run to the drug store and came back hours later with a story of how the computers all froze up and he was stuck victimized by our local Walgreen's. He was also having crisis-like problems in his marriage which was still new by all standards.

Barton Allen eventually did not perform up to his contract. Knopf canceled the book and Barton began to struggle even more mightily. It is possible with his new marriage to his great love Marianne, and his purported new children from that marriage, that Barton simply quit writing poetry. I encouraged him to write because I still believed he was a monster of a writer. But he couldn't. I did get him to publish the poem about me in the online rag elimae and that garnered a small review linked here.

We did not speak hardly at all anymore. He did respond to an inquiry of mine and my offer to publish his book of poems by my own press The Rogue Literary Society. I had made a series of handmade books with Japanese bindings and wanted to include Barton Allen in my stable of writers. Barton agreed and remarkably performed his obligations to me, signing all my copyright pages in a timely manner, and approving galleys professionally and promptly. I published his book of poems in 2005. The title was JUNE IN THE DRAWER OF LOWBOY. Gordon Lish refused Barton's request for a foreword to his book, or even an afterword as Gordon has graciously done with two of the four books The Rogue Literary Society has published. Barton surely must have known that when you have a promise with Lish you better live up to it. But we published the book anyway without Gordon's unique stamp on it, with Barton clearly disappointed to have fallen so far from Gordon's grace. The book is still in print.

My good friends from elimae announced on the publication of Barton's book: "Many of you will remember Barton Allen from The Quarterly a decade ago. At one time his collection, The Miss Kelly Poems, was to be published by Knopf, with Gordon Lish as editor. His collection June in the Drawer of Lowboy, a handmade, signed, limited edition, can now be ordered from Rogue Literary Society."

Some time after publication Barton called to inform me he had gone through a difficult time in his life and his marriage had ended. The children now lived with Marianne. No, he still wasn't writing. We haven't spoken since. But I feel The Rogue Literary Society did something monumental in getting Barton Allen's first book into print. Even if there is never another book or poem produced by the man, he is certainly on record for writing some of the strongest poems any young man has ever written. His many poems published in several consecutive issues of The Quarterly attest to his importance to Lish during that period of time. But one book does not make a great poet. We know that. A lifetime of accomplishment is what is needed, and also a willingness to overcome oneself for the sake of art. It is not an easy task to beat a poet the likes of Jack Gilbert either. Gilbert has been living strong for about eighty-five years and writing great poetry for at least sixty of them. It is also quite tempting for me to say that most poets writing today don't know Jack, but I won't do it.