The Coronary Garden is a collection braiding love and mortality, and through these quietly powerful poems Townsend announces her presence as a serious voice in contemporary poetry. In subjects as varied as babies, saints, sex, illness, and the natural world, Townsend locates mystery and gives it to the reader.
Ann Townsend's new, transformative work reconciles the rich traditions of such representative figures as Marvell, Thomson, and Clare. Alternately metaphysical and pastoral, The Coronary Garden is acute in detail and subtle in its formal commitments. The poet's light and luminous touch is everywhere. Townsend is especially telling in her hold on the life within her reach, both her domestic, romantic, immediate world and those other, contemplative, interior gardens. She is a country poet, whose nurturing power is persuasion.
-Stanley Plumly
Ah to be the one for whom the love poems in this sexy, brainy, elegant book were written.
-Linda Gregerson
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