Alan May

Alan May holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. His poems have appeared in New Orleans Review, The Hollins Critic, The Idaho Review, The New York Quarterly, Interim, Willow Springs, The Hong Kong Review, and others. He has published four books of poetry. His book Ad Infinitum: New and Selected Poems 1995-2025 is forthcoming in 2026. He lives in Knoxville, TN.

PRAISE FOR DERELICT DAYS IN THAT DERELICT TOWN: NEW AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS:

“May’s strong, often humorous, unique voice makes the ordinary and rural spaces—the plant life, cigarettes, and rust of Appalachia—surreal and mythic…We feel, ultimately, ‘as if/ anything were possible/ there in the woods far from home.'” —SARA MOORE WAGNER

“The poems in Derelict Days in That Derelict Town may leave you feeling as though Alan May sees things the rest of us walk right past, and afterwards you cannot help but wonder how you missed so much that is right there to be seen, heard, and felt…Alan May’s imagination is a wonderful place to visit, and I kind of wish I lived there.” —JESSE GRAVES

“The quirky wrapping of these poems peels away to reveal that, against all odds, underneath the everyday horrors of the world, survives a tenderness, alive, capacious, nothing less than miraculous.” —CINTIA SANTANA

“Alan May interrogates memory and imagination in this collection of arresting days, underscoring how the mundane and ordinary are anything but that, if we will only pay attention. But I’d be remiss if I suggested his poems are somber affairs, dour and dreary. His interrupted narratives are romps of dereliction, full of sly mischief and telling critiques.” —TODD DAVIS

“Southern Gothic meets Office Space where wiffle balls and abandoned shopping malls entangle with encounters with wolves and monsters. In unforgettable poems where allegory and fairy tale blend into the wonder of the untamable, torch-hunted being, we are asked, ‘where is the lovely child / running through the forest where is he / who is miraculously healed?'” —TYLER MILLS

PRAISE FOR NOTES TOWARD AN APOCRYPHAL TEXT:

"The poems... are carefully measured, stark and moving. It is a strong original poetry."--SIMON PERCHIK

"[This book] by Alan May presents a new poet whose vivid imagination expresses itself in brilliant juxtapositions of imagery and language. His work has an immediate power and, beneath its often-absurdiste surface, is rich and haunting."--BILL KNOTT

PRAISE FOR DEAD LETTERS:

"The voice in these poems is powerfully deep and inside, as if it's coming up from the bottom of a well. Yet it is also a recognizable voice, one we have in our own heads at certain moments. Alan May has created an echo-chamber of lyric consciousness, not in service of solipsism, but for the purpose of communion. These poems disturb and sadden and charm, but above all they keep us with them. The illustrations, by Tom Wegrzynowski and May, are as other-worldly as the poems, yet the art of this moving and elegant book convinces the reader the other world is where we do our living. DEAD LETTERS is a work of great beauty and force, of intelligence and stark humility."--MAURICE MANNING

"Only here, in poems playful as they are crucial, whimsical & heartbreaking, where the landscape contains a burning accordion, and 'each chuffed note/ fan[s] the flame/ that burns,' can the instrument burn to be sung, its every breath a gorgeous annihilation."--ARIANA-SOPHIA KARTSONIS

"Melville's Ahab wanted to "strike though" the pasteboard mask of reality, to whatever was underneath the dead letter of the world. See where that got him. Alan May knows another world, the world such letters make with and out of one another, a visionary, resonant, beautiful world where nothing lurks to lead us away. DEAD LETTERS is a sensuous, lively book, an impressive debut."--JAKE ADAM YORK

"Part Seuss, part Stein, part Brothers (very) Grimm, DEAD LETTERS arrives in a lively blaze of highly accomplished play marking Alan May's own arrival into the quirky exactitude of his peculiarly fine poetry. The poems and beautifully right illustrations by Tom Wegrzynowski transport us into a world of ominous fables populated by slightly warped mythic and threatening beings of our own so-called adult world. Or, as Alan May invites us: 'Reality/ is the horse/ you rode/ in on;// please dismount/ and hop aboard/ my Rickshaw .' Please buy this book & take this ride astride a poetry rich in a nightmarish beauty made of music, image, and vision."--HANK LAZER

PRAISE FOR MORE UNKNOWNS:

"To read Alan May's MORE UNKNOWNS is to navigate an alluring necropolis in which the signature phrases of our own numbed and bellicose epoch continue signaling through the flames. May's canny and delicate lyrics remind us that to live in our era is to be proximate to both the technology of violence and its taxonomy; there is no one alive on earth who does not suffer this infernal fluency."--JOYELLE MCSWEENEY