Nancy Jo Allen proudly announces the release (March 20, 2021) of her first collection of poetry through her publisher Kelsay Books and Amazon. The book is entitled Wrinkles in Time and in Love, and includes the poem “Art” first published in Third Wednesday’s Vol.XI, No. 4 edition.
“Allen’s poems take us on a journey through the difficulties of relationship and identity: daughter, wife, mother, ex-wife, friend, and wife again. At each stage, we’re asked to reconsider our preconceptions and ideals in favor of the lived experience of those realities—a thoughtful and polished collection.”
—Marta Ferguson, former poetry editor for The Missouri Review, and author of Mustang Sally Pays Her Debt to Wilson Pickett
“Nancy Jo Allen’s poems are deeply felt and well crafted. She has an excellent ear and eye.”
—Bruce Taylor is the former Poet Laureate of Eau Claire and host of Off the Page a reading series at the Local Store Gallery.
“Like the haiku, Allen’s poetry captures small moments of life with images from nature. And like a haiku, the collection is perfect in word, rhythm, and line. Through her poems, we travel through the landscape of memory and vicariously touch grief and let it go. We recognize defeat and replace it with contentment. We love again.”
—Lori Younker, author of Mongolian Interior: An Expatriate Experience and Sioux Beside Me, former Columbia Chapter Missouri Writers Guild president, and author and founder of World So Bright.org, a collection of cultural essays.
Nancy Jo Allen was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and now lives in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband Terry and their pup Jayden.
Click to see a video recording of Nancy reading from Wrinkles in Time and in Love.
“Robert Lowes addresses with wit and compassion topics we recognize: the body’s betrayals, unfulfilled desires, nostalgia, loss. Lowes’s love of words is apparent in his masterful soundwork and the equal skill with which he depicts the delicate beauty of a butterfly or slams home a devastating judgment on our human failings. A wide-ranging cast of characters wanders through these poems: a woman who keeps chickens, a Neanderthal buying an ax, a man with a fresh haircut, God. 
The Unmapped Worlds in this book extend from history to a way of life centered on European villages to the marginally surreal experience of our own times. The poems are previously uncollected ones enjoying their rediscovery. Whether through the visions of a medieval mystic or the routines that defined existence in a small town on the free world’s edge, David Chorlton reaches for what brought the mind to life in the course of living from day to day. The desert emerges as it appeared to early missionaries and conquerors in the Southwest and comes to bear multiple cultures today. Writing is a journey to the poet, and the work here follows some occasionally surprising side roads for Chorlton. 
Spindrift suggests stuff blown onto beaches, beaches of discovery in one’s mind. When these poems show a squirrel, a fish, birds, a beggar, an Irish pub, or a dish we see these as metaphors which conjure up ideas or feelings from our own familiarity with them. A poem that begins as an abstraction, like an enemy or peace or patience, becomes objectified. Spindrift is comprised of whatever little gems might be found along the shore, examined closely to become part of the reader’s experience. These jottings of spindrift take off from that experience like going to an airport when you want to be someplace else – or like poems which say one thing when they mean another.
Laurence W. Thomas is the founding editor of 
Art Work
Terry Allen was born in Brisbane, Australia. He is emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he taught theatre arts. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and he is the author of the chapbook, Monsters in the Rain. He lives in Columbia, Missouri with his wife Nancy.
