The Blue Dress: Poems & Prose Poems

by Townsend, Alison

• ISBN13: 9781893996618
• ISBN10: 1893996611
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Dist

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Lifeline	13	(4)
I. Calf Season
Red: A Poem in Five Parts	17	(4)
Baldy Notch, via Devil's Backbone	21	(1)
No Matter How Much Sunlight	22	(1)
Relapse	23	(2)
Daily	25	(1)
Twelve Below Zero	26	(1)
Spring Geography	27	(2)
Looking at MRI Scans of My Brain	29	(1)
The Grief of Animals	30	(1)
In Any Language	31	(2)
Red-Breasted Nuthatch	33	(1)
The Habit of Its Fit	34	(2)
Instinct	36	(1)
Leaving Dorland Mountain	37	(4)
A Bowl of Sugar	41	(1)
From One Life to the Next	42	(2)
Ordering Clothes from Victoria's Secret	44	(2)
My Ex-Husband Asks Me Who Reads My Rough Drafts	46	(1)
Pouring	47	(2)
Epilogue	49	(2)
Calf Season	51	(1)
My Grandmother's Roses	52	(5)
II. Truth Serum
Ring-O-Levio	57	(2)
The Barbie Birthday	59	(2)
With Monsters, 1964	61	(1)
Truth Serum	62	(2)
Librium	64	(2)
My Life as a Horse	66	(2)
Magic 8	68	(3)
Joan of Arc	71	(3)
Hunt Mountain	74	(2)
Supplies	76	(2)
Radio Love Poem	78	(2)
What the Body Knows	80	(3)
Stealing Clothes from My Stepmother	83	(2)
Along the Path	85	(1)
Smoke	86	(3)
Seventeenth Summer	89	(1)
High School Boyfriends	90	(2)
Open Sesame	92	(2)
Lantern	94	(1)
Eggs	95	(2)
In a Field, with Horses, 1972	97	(1)
My Stepmother's Ambrosia	98	(3)
III. The Blue Dress
My Parents' Dance Lessons, 1945	101	(2)
Fever of Unknown Origin, 1955	103	(1)
Paradise	104	(1)
Silver Shoes	105	(2)
Raising Water	107	(2)
My Mother's Pastels	109	(1)
Signing My Name	110	(1)
Balancing	111	(2)
Each Broken Note Shining	113	(2)
The Blue Dress	115	(2)
Last Photograph of My Family	117	(2)
A Child's Book of Death	119	(1)
The Right Color	120	(1)
My Mother's Clothes	121	(2)
Madame Alexander's ``Amy''	123	(1)
First Haircut, 1963	124	(2)
With No Words to Name This	126	(1)
Black Stone	127	(2)
Small Planets	129	(1)
Cape Ann Summer	130	(2)
A Box of My Mother's Hair	132	(2)
Yellow October	134	(2)
Notes on the Poems	136	(1)
Acknowledgments	137	(4)
About the Author	141