An "Elegiac and Jubilant" Collection of Poetry by Alice Templeton

Writing from her "share of solitude," Alice Templeton calls up beloved places and people from the infinite field of memory: the Memphis suburbs of her childhood, the family farm in middle Tennessee that was a touchstone for her adolescent and adult life, and the relatives with whom she shared those places. Templeton's language conjures "the hour creatures draw close," and within the bounds of these singular poems, time is arrested. The decline of her parents and the destruction of the family home by fire compel her to reinspect the past and fully claim her present life in California. Taken together, these poems tell a loving liberation story as the poet moves on from a way of life spent close to the land.