New Poetry Collection by Middletown Resident Allison ’85

Susan Allison ’85 has just published a poetry collection, Down by the Riverside Ways (Antrim Books).

Allison returned to Middletown a few years after graduating from Wesleyan and has lived here since.

Most of the poems in this collection have been written in Middletown over the last 20 years.

Allison comments: “I like the word concatenation, meaning: to link in a chain, to describe some of the poems. Many of the poems are concatenations of ideas based in experience. The book as a whole is a concatenation, and strives to make sense through random strings of devotion. I owe much to Rennie McQuilken who collaborated with me on the book.”

A Tune for Harmonica
by Susan Allison
for Thomas Moses

Ladder ladder I descend
down where cocktail parties end.
Landscaped vistas, rarified air—
it’s too freezing cold up there.
Moribund hostesses make me shiver.
I am climbing a ladder down to the river.

Rippled current ocean-bound,
only here do I bow down,
sink my toes in fish-rank muck
soft and warm and full of suck.
My harp sings to the blessing giver.
I am climbing her ladder down by the river.