Ann Townsend is the author of Dime Store Erotics and The Coronary Garden (poems) and editor of Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (with David Baker). She directs the creative writing program at Denison University and is a founding member of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
The Late Ash Trees
Needles rained in the pine grove. Acorns tumbled in the tall grass. I was about to inflict phenomenology upon the oak trees. I was about to dispense some prescription like […]
Nature's Nature
May/June 2016
The Mind Is Its Own Place
Mated and unmated, starlings swarm the willow with their devotions until the tree roils and sways, wing-beats sounding the torrent through which they swim. Dopamine, paroxetine, an injection of adrenaline […]
A SYMPOSIUM ON EMILY DICKINSON
Summer 2014
Rowing in Eden
The only Commandment I ever obeyed—’Consider the Lilies.’ (L 904) On my desk: an oiled stone that rests to serve as a reminder of its own heft and weight, and […]
A Symposium on John Keats
Fall 2011
Myopic Keats
At fifteen, John Keats was apprenticed to an Edmonton surgeon, thus setting in motion a series of events which would fundamentally alter his poetic vision. After six years of medical […]
Poetry
Winter 1998
Dime Store Erotics
The dim gift store shimmers with candy bars and cheap key chains swinging. The night bus checks out at nine; you can still climb on board if you abandon the […]
Poetry
Winter 1998
House by a Green Sea
You are here now on the bed with me: after five hours of sleeplessness we are tumbled like exhausted runners beneath an eggshell sky. Pressed to the pillow you moan […]
Poetry
Summer 1995
In a Moment
She drives alone and quickly on a snow-blasted highway—no cars, only the salt kiss of the semis as they steam by. Jazz on the radio, in and out with the […]
Poetry
Summer 1995
The Breathing Treatment
Luminarias light the yards, fizzy candles snug in sand-filled bags that catch the sleet grazing the street, the yards, dark houses everywhere Seatbelts tight, we wait out the traffic light […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
Rouge
That morning she stood in the kitchen and considered the chair, its ignoble lines, its wood of no interest or value, no grain to coax out with a brush, no […]
Poetry
Spring 1992
A Trick of the Eye
I have no imagination but what I steal. I think of it when I walk past the strangely fashioned chair in the furniture store window, whose back is shaped and […]