In this quiet, clear-eyed collection, Townsend meditates on loss-childhood bereavement, depression, divorce-to arrive at the realization that it is through loss that we come to possess some of life’s most profound gifts.

The project of Alison Townsend’s poetry is to chart a course through the deepest of losses-to attempt some safe passage through a lifetime’s erasures. Intimate, warm and observant, this book involves us in the inscription of a life. -Mark Doty

Alison Townsend was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and spent her childhood in North Salem, New York. She received a B.A. at Marlboro College in Vermont, an M.A. at Claremont Graduate School in California, and an M.F.A. at Vermont College in Mont-pelier. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.