His Longing: The Small Penis Oratorio

by Paul Allen

I am not a student of theology. As Flannery O'Connor says in her note to the second edition of Wise Blood, I am "an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations." For the arguments of these poems, I lean heavily on the following sources: St. John of the Cross's redaction of The Dark Night of the Soul, Teresa of Avila's The Way of Perfection, Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ, Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life, and Thomas Merton's A Search for Solitude and New Seeds of Contemplation. For some of the details, I use Robin Smith's The Encyclopedia of Sexual Trivia and the internet, the price for which appears to be a lifetime of spam promising perfection.

Paul Allen

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Paul Allen taught poetry and song lyrics writing at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, but is now retired and lives on the road in a camper. His poems appear in a number of journals, including Southern Review, Northwest Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Ontario Review, New England Review, Iowa Review, Puerto Del Sol.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

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