The Green Hour

Alison Townsend is the award-winning author of two poetry collections, The Blue Dress and Persephone in America, and a volume of prose, The Persistence of Rivers. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Contents Black Raspberries Prelude Genius Loci:Gazing into the Green I: Her Intricate Weave A Strand in Her Intricate Weave Beyond Wild Run Farm: A Travel Guide to an Eastern Pennsylvania Childhood Planting Pansies My Mother's Dress II: The Landscapes inside US My Thoreau Summer California Girl At the Bottom of the Ocean: Psych Ward, 1986 The Landscapes inside Us Coyote Crossings III: The Persistence of Rivers The Persistence of Rivers IV: A Wisconsin Book of Hours Four and Twenty In the Presence of Water High Wind Warning Window Tree Strange Angels: Encounters with Sandhill Cranes Flower Moon: A Wisconsin Book of Hours V: The Kingdom of Ordinary Things An Alphabet of Here: A Prairie Sampler Midsummer Milkweeds A Jar of Wisconsin Honey Autumn Equinox, with Asters Goldengrove Unleaving Wild Swans Elegy in December Valentine Envoi My Pink Lake and Other Digressions Acknowledgments Notes

"Both a tale of homecoming and a travel narrative, shared through heartfelt missives from the author's memory and life. . . . Green imagery vines through the collection. . . . The Green Hour beautifully celebrates our human relationships with the natural world."-- "Wisconsin People & Ideas" "No lines are wasted, and every sentence contains wondrous details of the natural world. . . . This book is a conversation with the places Townsend inhabits and one that fully draws the reader in with precise and detailed descriptions. Long meditative passages describing the land capture the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Each sentence contains images that bring the reader deeper and deeper into Townsend's environment."--Hippocampus Magazine "[Wisconsin's] thriving natural paradise is on full display not just on the cover of Alison Townsend's gorgeous new memoir, The Green Hour, but also in the author's lush, lyrical words. . . . This is a nature memoir, a love letter to the land and an exploration of what it means to put down roots. Don't miss it."--Madison Magazine "A powerful narrative, steeped in emotion, healing, and vulnerability, one that resonates with a wide readership. Townsend's story is needed more than ever. . . . In accessible and poetic prose, Townsend appeals to a general audience. She engages her readers into becoming citizen environmental scientists and humanists. It is a call for slowing down and steeping oneself in contemplation in this accelerated and highly contested stage of the Anthropocene."--H-Environment "An inherently fascinating, informative, thoughtful and thought-provoking read throughout, The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home showcases author Alison Townsend's enviable skills as an observant storyteller. The result is a book that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after it has been finished and set back upon the shelf."--Midwest Book Review "I enjoyed The Green Hour, for its prose and questing narrator, and for its evocation of landscapes and inner geography in these fine essays of loss, love, and healing."--Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of the Imagination "I read The Green Hour outside, and every few sentences I looked up to see this familiar place through Townsend's eyes, every detail now infused with the 'proper attitude of wonder.' I suggest you take this book out with you into the world where all things are 'waiting to be noticed and seen.'"--Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life "In essays of breathtaking beauty and emotional honesty, The Green Hour explores the psychic costs of uprooting, and the healing to be found in connecting with the natural world. Townsend is a writer so attuned to the numinous that her lyrical prose seems to shimmer on the page. An unforgettable book."--Catherine Jagoe, author of Bloodroot "Truly a love song to wild, shining places. It is a lonely, lovely memoir of a life shaped by a mother's early death, a story from the time when the Earth still had the strength to save her children."--Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth's Wild Children