ALAN GULLETTE
  • Home
  • Books
    • translucent books
    • Dark Green Sun Press
    • Bibliography
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • About
  • Contact
presents

The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard

A Surrealist Seance

By John Thomas Allen & Alan Gullette


The record of a trans-continental surrealist seance that began on July 7, 2015 and ended 24 days later on July 31, 2015... ________________________________________ “This collaborative poem shines like a revolving eye across the darkness we inhabit." – Andrew Joron

About the Book


In The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard, John Thomas Allen and Alan Gullette engage in breaking the levees of the poetic imagination and distilling an ore of ivy bamboo in this almost perversely intense volume. They read like a spell written in hieroglyphs of baking sheet letters spinning without a head. To miss this is to forsake vision, a parasurrealism that sees everything and nothing at once in a small annihilating point.
With a Foreword by Donald Sidney-Fryer.Dark Green Sun Press, 2016ISBN-10: 1530127009ISBN-13: 978-1530127009Paperback, 6" x 9", 354 pages
Order from Amazon

Praise for the Book


"This collaborative poem by John Thomas Allen and Alan Gullette takes its place in the grand tradition of surrealist collaboration initiated by Breton and Soupault in The Magnetic Fields: two poets become communicating vessels for concocting a magical word that will transform the world. Driven by the counterpoint of two voices, language turns incandescent. The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard shines like a revolving eye across the darkness we inhabit."-- Andrew Joron, author of Trance Archive, The Cry at Zero, Neo-Surrealism; Or, The Sun at Night: Transformations of Surrealism in American Poetry, et al.
"John Thomas Allen and Alan Gullette... have achieved something novel, innovative, and unprecedented in this substantial book in which they have combined their considerable talents."-- from the foreword by Donald Sidney-Fryer, author of Songs and Sonnets Atlantean; Emperor of Dreams, A Clark Ashton Smith Bibliography; Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand (translation); et al.

Praise for the Authors

Praise for John Thomas Allen "Freud said to the young surrealists to beware of unconscious imagery, and Meyer Schapiro said even dreams were social. John reminds me of Lamantia, Vigo, Bolano -- raw and angry but with a clear day under his baseball cap. Like the Berrigan brothers, he seems to be writing a last protesting book, with the harp of Harpo and instead of handcuffs from a flic who appears to look like a hamburger... "The soul is conscious in this new voice, and John wears a rosary around his neck. Real as Albany, his infra-surrealism is growing and growling. Good that he's so disappointed; he occupies a special place in Poetry Park."-- David Shapiro, author of New and Collected Poems, Abstract Expressionism: A Critical Record, et al. "When I first read some of John's work, I thought I was reading some lost bits of Bob Kaufmann!"-- Lee Ballentine, author of Poly: New Speculative Writing, Renounce the Emerald Piety, et al. "The work of John Allen is profoundly moored; it is exploratory, shaded and searching. Read his work, and follow his quest."-- Charles Bane, Jr., author of The Chapbook: Poems by Charles Bane, Jr., I Meet Geronimo and Other Stories, et al. "John Thomas Allen's surreal images strung together like pearls; seemingly random events and characters juxtaposed in ways that expose mind-expanding meanings; the pungent, unblinking eye of the camera obscura; the unexpected voice of transients, ne'er do wells and those forgotten by fortune; these flavors and many more await readers of John Thomas Allen's dreamlike humanist poetry and prose. There is a certain light to these visions -- a three-in-the-morning beam of truth that exposes both deep flaws and great beauty in every subject, every character. "John Thomas Allen offers us a mirror -- who among us can resist looking? What we see in the process is the bones of our collective socio-intellectual hypocrisy. The result is a simultaneously humbling and edifying reading experience: our flaws are laid bare but we realize in the blush of our shame that we still have an ineluctable beauty if only we are willing to cultivate it. John Thomas Allen's world has existed always, around us, among us and within us; in coming to terms with his humbling and uplifting indictments, we can only shake our heads and wonder how it is that we have missed so much for so long. Read, and walk with him." -- Rich Follet, author of Silence, Inhabited: Poetic Reflections on Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse, Responsorials, et al. Praise for Alan Gullette
S.T. Joshi on From a Safe Distance: “Alan Gullette’s remarkable gift for finding exactly the right word for the right place, his scintillating use of symbol and metaphor, and the keenness of his insight into the fundamental weirdness of everyday life should give him high rank among modern poets. Gullette is worthy to carry the torch of Californian imaginative poetry.” Don Webb on Intimations of Unreality: “The Green Transfer is pure surrealism of the Boris Vian school. The prose is immaculate and disorienting. I hope this novella winds up in some permanent collection of the Best of Weird. The scope, aims and methods of [the novellas] would not make them odd shelf mates to Borges or Ligotti.” Bruce Boston on Short Shrift: “Intriguing, fascinating and clever. Many tales are told in a voice that reminded me of Richard Brautigan. I also detected shades of Italo Calvino and Thomas Wiloch. Highly recommended if you are looking for something different, intelligent, and a good read.” Donald Sidney-Fryer on Reviving a Dead Priest: “The sense of fantasy and linguistic play holds high carnival in this volume! We personally find [it] a godsend or a cosmos-gift of clearness in terms of the ongoing existential maelstrom and confusion.”

Also by the Authors

John Thomas Allen has written and edited the following: The Other Guy. Cleveland, OH: Crisis Chronicles Press, 2012. Nouveau's Midnight Sun: Transcriptions from Golgonooza and Beyond. Spokane, WA: Ravenna Press, 2014. Lumiere. Cleveland, OH: NightBallet Press, 2014. His new book entitled Fake Shemp is due out later this year. His poems have appeared in Veil: a Journal of Dark Musings, Arsenic Lobster Magazine, Surreal Poetics, The Cimmaron Review, et al., and he has a story in the recently released anthology More Bizarro Than Bizarro.

On Facebook

Like, Share, Comment! Here's the Facebook Page for The Lighthouse Above the Graveyard:https://www.facebook.com/lighthouseabovethegraveyard
Order from Amazon
Copyright © 2023 by Alan Gullette. All Rights Reserved.

We use cookies to enable essential functionality on our website, and analyze website traffic. By clicking Accept you consent to our use of cookies. Read about how we use cookies.

Your Cookie Settings

We use cookies to enable essential functionality on our website, and analyze website traffic. Read about how we use cookies.

Cookie Categories
Essential

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our websites. You cannot refuse these cookies without impacting how our websites function. You can block or delete them by changing your browser settings, as described under the heading "Managing cookies" in the Privacy and Cookies Policy.

Analytics

These cookies collect information that is used in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are.