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Ann Townsend

Ann Townsend is the author of Dime Store Erotics (1998) and The Coronary Garden (2005). She is the editor with David Baker of Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (2008). Her poetry and criticism appear in such magazines as Poetry, Paris Review, The Nation, Witness, and The Georgia Review. She is professor and director of creative writing at Denison University.

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Whitman in Baghdad

Spring 2012 | Essays

“I was going to hold forth on arms, and the violence of warfare, in a meter suited to the manner,” wrote the Roman poet Ovid at the outset of his Amores, “but Cupid, laughing,” he continued, “stole one foot from the second line,” shifting [...]

A Mind for Metaphors

Drawing diagrams I measured Movements of the stars; Though her tender flesh is near Her mind I cannot measure. Sometime in the seventeenth century, the sixth Dalai Lama wrote this brief but revealing poem about the problem of people. The poem [...]