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.