Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected

This wide-ranging collection from a 30-year career show Allen's poetry developing from a free-wheeling free verse to the employment of formal structure. Allen's work ranges with ease from astronomy to politics to domestic situations; his poetry captures great swatches of real and imagined experience in nimble style. The more structured works focus his energies to the best effect. Ironically, structure serves him best when Allen follows Whitman's expansive lead and engages in list-making or cosmic inclusiveness. For example, in ""The Neo-Transcendentalist""-structured in eight-line stanzas with near-rhymes-Allen lists the many people who continue to live on in a man's memory: ""They travel through him. They take/ High roads and low roads, run the rapids of his blood."" In the title poem, Allen speaks directly to the Cold War, listing the multitude of events, personalities and concepts belonging to the historical period before he concludes with Whitman's line: ""I sing the Song of Myself."" And indeed, in poems ranging from memories of a 1950s childhood to space travel and Cold War tensions, Allen, by singing of himself, sings of his time as well. (Mar.)