I first discovered Kenneth Allott in my teenage years when I encountered his poem, Aunt Sally Speaks, in one of the exam papers I was told to look through. It must have made a great impression on me because I wrote no less than FOUR essays upon the poem, and then the exam paper mysteriously disappeared. I still have no idea WHICH paper it was, let alone which exam board it was for, and wonder sometimes whether I could have imagined it.

Kenneth Allott (1911-1973) is now best known as an editor. He did the Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse and edited critical works upon Matthew Arnold and Jules Verne among many others. However, his poetry spoke to me like nothing else. I have never found a poet who spoke so clearly to me before, and yet, one had the feeling that Allott was being deliberately ambiguous. It seemed that he cared for everybody without caring who or what they were, and that his poetry, at its finest, embraced the universal theme of the isolated person.

There is no information about Allott as a person on the web, which, as the Devoted Fan, I feel duty-bound to put to rights. If there is any question of copyright infringement by using the works of Allott, please contact me and I will - VERY regretfully - remove them from this site. Allott's small body of poems - only about 70 in all - includes one poem which I consider to be the GREATEST ever modern love poem, The Statue, which is often called Surrealist poetry, along with Lament for a Cricket Eleven. I disagree. The Statue may use surrealist elements, but it is tender, loving, and unusually ambiguous. It seems that you can offer it to almost anybody - be they old or young, black or white, no matter what their sexuality or beliefs.

I have used the paintings of Paul Delvaux to illustrate this poem because I feel that they are a perfect complement, in their mystical and oddly asexual frigidity to the tender ambiguity of The Statue, which is a poem about loving rather than a love poem. You will be able to access The Statue by clicking on the Paul Delvaux painting below.

I have used the paintings of Picasso to accompany Aunt Sally Speaks because I find that Picasso, with his fierce distortions and passion, best echoes the almost violent imagery of this poem. You can access Aunt Sally Speaks by clicking on the Picasso painting below.

The third poem, Offering, is not as heavily image-laden. That's just the webpage. The text is rich and almost overladen with images and metaphors. It is the best example of Allott's eclectic use of imagery. You can access Offering by clicking on the Frederick Childe Hassom painting below.
 

Offering  The Statue  Aunt Sally Speaks

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