Joel Allegretti
Joel Allegretti is an American poet and fiction writer. His second book of poetry, Father Silicon, was selected by the Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, the first anthology of poetry about the mass medium.
He has published his work in many U.S. journals and is represented in more than forty anthologies.
He is a member of the American Poets and ASCAP.
Poetry
Allegretti's poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, ''Barrow Street, Harpur Palate, Smartish Pace, PANK, and many other national journals, as well as in journals published in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and India.In addition to writing six books and chapbooks of poetry, he conceived and edited the anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. The Boston Globe called it "cleverly edited" and "a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV." Rain Taxi said, "With its diversity of content and poetic form, Rabbit Ears'' feels more rich and eclectic than any other poetry anthology on the market."
Fiction
Allegretti has published short stories in The MacGuffin, The Adroit Journal, Thrice Fiction, and The Nassau Review, among other literary magazines.Our Dolphin, a novella about a deformed Italian adolescent and a talking dolphin, appeared in 2016.
Let's All Be Happy Today, a collection of short fiction, appeared in 2025.
Performance works
His performance texts and short plays have been staged at La MaMa, Medicine Show Theatre, Cornelia Street Cafe, and Sidewalk Cafe, all in New York. He conceived and co-edited "Dear Yoko: A Tribute to Yoko Ono," a special digital issue of Nerve Lantern, a journal of performance texts and writings about performance.Musical works
Allegretti has published conceptual and experimental musical compositions in Maintenant: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art and in anthologies from great weather for MEDIA and Thrice Publishing.He supplied the texts for three song cycles by the late Frank Ezra Levy, whose recorded work is available in the Naxos American Classics series.
Woman on the Beach, a choral work by Lindsay Greene on his poem of the same title, had its world premiere in the 2024 Festival of Contemporary Artists in Music at Washington State University.
He has co-written songs with blues guitarist Son Lewis, who records for Silk City, a label that specializes in blues, jazz, and folk music.