The Shepherds of Tenth Avenue by Allison Thorpe

Allison Thorpe‘s gimlet eye misses nothing: girlhood, womanhood, home, and the natural world are all given equal due through a poet’s gaze as loving as it is sharp, as generous as it is appraising. These poems love what they’re talking about, and I love them right back.

–Sarah Combs, author of The Light Fantastic

In this collection of poems Allison Thorpe demonstrates an uncanny ability to draw the reader into the world of the protagonist. Every emotion imaginable is lived through the very rich language and masterful poetic technique of the author. Many of these recollections are told with a tone of sweet melancholia but always with resolute optimism. Strong emotions are often made universally applicable by a surprising twist at the end of the poem.  The writing is fun and troubling and deeply moving.

–Bobby Steve Baker, author of This Crazy Urge to Live

Using lush language, Allison Thorpe creates word paintings: a veritable chiaroscuro of youth. Days are redolent with blossoms and scent, nights, a garden with a serpent in it. While the childhood she describes is often fraught, her poems about craving a lime green bikini, dreaming of Fabian, plus wild girls Janis and Gracie, and of misadventures with hair dye, inject a readily identifiable, wry sense of embarrassment at stupid-things-done-when-young. We can survive trauma and abuse. Thorpe shows us in this collection there is a real art to it.

–Alan Catlin, Editor, Misfit Magazine, Poet, Blue Velvett, 2017 Slipstream Chapbook Contest Winner