The Coronary Garden

I heard Ann Townsend read her poems in New York, and immediately got her book. Her poems are elegant but very tough- minded, with sinew. Outloud they are lyrical, graceful, in her voice, and on the page the grace becomes more terse. I love the poems about children -- her daughter, a stricken child in a hospital -- and her sense of wit, which seems nearly metaphysical, in the way it constructs and sustains a metaphor or an argument, deepening it, making it all the more complex inside her well-wrought sentences. "The Reliquary" is a great example: "The world with its dangers / submits to me, / my spells, my potions, / for I outguess the heavens, / and with that blasphemy // which makes better my heart, / I tap the seat belt, / the helmet, the pavement / and other hard surfaces, / I carry a picture of you, // my purse a reliquary / of your totems...." Other favorites here: "Preparatory Meditation," and several love poems like "Your Body's Weight Upon Me" and "Old Fashioned Kissing," and a number of historical poems like "St. Veronica's Trials," which tells the story of Veronica Orsola, a medieval nun who saw visions (due to, probably, her chosen anorexia!). This is incredible poetry.

Townsend is one of my favorite poets, and Coronary Garden is a brilliant book. The poems are lyrical, but have vivid narrative threads throughout them. They are beautiful, but there is often a terror, a haunt, a turmoil, at their hearts. A friend's suicide attempt, a striken child, a perilous love, a vanished father -- some of the stories beneath her stories. But I love most her very rich, dense, clear language. These poems sing. Read "Coronary Garden" or the poem about St. Veronica, and you'll see what I mean.