William Allen creates an imagistic world undergoing momentous changes in a series of poems based on titles of long-disappeared paintings from 19th-century New England painter Edward Mitchell Bannister as well as in poems evoking smells, sights, sounds of mid-nineteenth century America along the Newtown Creek between Queens and Brooklyn.

Poems celebrate the Queensboro Bridge, echoing Hart Crane, Walt Whitman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminding us of our immigrant and revolutionary heritage. And inspired by Awkwafina and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, “21 Stations” evokes lives and music and history along the stations of the New York City 7 train, the 167 languages spoken there, journeying east out of the city.

“In The Largest Glue Factory in the World, William Allen continues his exploration of what lies beneath us, whether cityscape or landscape or social-scape—especially in Queens, New York. With quirky poetics and sly insight, his version of the sonnet is a welcome addition to this increasingly revived form. And his take on history and art is distinctive.” 
   Kimiko Hahn, author of The Ghost Forest: new and selected poems 

“Breathtaking in scope, William Allen’s The Largest Glue Factory in the World is a poetic exploration of New York and New England, told from several personas in various time periods. Allen creates a sense of unity across the four sections by consistently using the loose sonnet form, which becomes a metaphorical glue embodied by the book’s title. The multi-sensory, multicultural and multilingual world of the city comes alive on these pages, enriched by the poet’s deep knowledge of history, art, mythology and biology. But it is the broader social commentary embedded in these poems that provides the insight we have come to expect from him.” 
   Marjory Wentworth, author of One River, One Boat, Occasional Poems and Other Stories 

“Bill Allen is a poet of the senses—sight, sound, smell—the list of scents in “A History of Newtown Creek” pulls together all of those senses with his amazing ability to present them in language lush yet grounded in a precise engagement with American history, its ideals, its horrors, reminding me of the work of Philip Levine. Readers of The Last Glue Factory can see a world viewed from the perspectives of a great artist, of working men and women, and bridges across New York (Queens) and the planet. Too few American poets explore the big questions about the American Experiment in Democracy or the consequences of the worst and best aspects of this nation’s history—Bill Allen confronts this topic with the poet’s greatest tools: remarkable language, intense perception, and the sense that America is only now becoming American.” 
   Patricia Spears Jones, poet and author of The Beloved Community and A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems