DICK ALLEN'S most recent book, The Day Before: New Poems (Sarabande Books, 2003) received the Sheila Motion Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry and the PEN/Winship Book Award. His earlier Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected (also Sarabande Books) was the first finalist for the annual William Carlos Williams Award from the Academy of American Poets. Allen’s poems have recently appeared or are soon forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The Hudson Review, Poetry International, The New Criterion, The American Poetry Review, The Ontario Review and The Best American Poetry: 2006. Allen received a 2005 Pushcart Prize and poetry writing fellowships from the NEA and Ingram Merrill Foundations.