Persephone in America

by Townsend, Alison

• ISBN13: 9780809328963
• ISBN10: 0809328968
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-02-25
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

InPersephone in America, Alison Townsend deftly weaves autobiography with myth in this reinvention of the tale of Demeter and Persephone as seen from the modern woman's perspective. Fraught with emotional honesty, this captivating collection of lyrical and narrative poems chronicles the struggles of the figurative Persephone in three partsthe abduction, descent to the underworld, and return. Townsend turns a shrewd eye to her own experiences, as well as to the lives of other women, to offer an unflinching yet deeply compassionate exploration of such themes as girlhood and the vulnerability of the motherless; the demons of depression, addiction, and abuse; as well as passion, aging, and celebration of the natural world. Although the poems traverse dark emotional territory at times, the picture that emerges ultimately is one of revelation and wisdom.Persephone in Americais above all a journey of the soul, following the narrator as she explores what it means to be a woman in America, at times descending into darkness, only to emerge into redemption and realize "time's sweet and invincible secretthat everything repeatsand we watch it." Townsend's candid portrait of female loss and discovery seeks to illuminate the truths inherent in myth, and the awakenings that hide in our darkest moments. Persephone, Pretending (Madison, Wisconsin) When the news says that the girl who had been missing almost four days, only to be found in a marshy area at the edge of our medium-sized city, was faking it all along, I wondered what made her do it. I'd seen her facebright smile, dark eyes on a flier masking-taped to a pillar at the airport the week before, felt the involuntary frisson of the curious, then only fear at the thought of a girlabducted in this place once voted "America's most livable city."

Alison Townsend is an associate professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. She is the author of And Still the Music, What the Body Knows, and The Blue Dress: Poems and Prose Poems.