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 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. Together, these poems tell a loving liberation story as the poet moves on from a way of life spent close to the land.
Alice Templeton is the author of two poetry collections—The Infinite Field (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2024) and Archaeology (Finishing Line Press, winner of the 2008 New Women's Voices Chapbook Prize)—and a scholarly book on Adrienne Rich's poetics. Her poems and stories have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, Nimrod, Poetry, and elsewhere. Originally from Tennessee, she has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2002.
"Written at the crossroads of reverie and history, Alice Templeton's poems are at turns both elegiac and jubilant as they move through the rural and urban landscapes of Tennessee and California. Muscadine vines, loosestrife, hobblebush, and California jasmine punctuate these deftly revealed pastorals. The Infinite Field is slow poetry at its best. Fully embodied, the poet returns home and takes her final leave, reminding us that we are 'slips of the sequential tongue, confounding our biographies.'" — Rebecca Black, author of Cottonlandia
"Intimate and engaging, these poems by Alice Templeton hold the reader with sure lines that never get fussy, never spill over aesthetically or emotionally. If the 'air has grown rare and precise,' so has the body of American poetry, enriched by these classic verses. Templeton's varied lyrics are not just poems, they are companions that we can carry with us to remind us of what poetry at its best can be." — Marilyn Kallet, author of Even When We Sleep
"These poems possess a dreamlike beauty, haunted—or I should say inhabited—by memories of childhood, family, spiritual community, and the culverts, creeks, and rivers of Tennessee. I think of these poems as quilts, arrangements of the remnants of the past put into fresh and surprising combinations: No matter where they go, they carry the texture and warmth of home." — D. A. Powell, author of Useless Landscape; or A Field Guide for Boys
"The Infinite Field is an ambitious balancing act: the echoes of memory meet the grit of experience, musical language interlaced with occasional thick texture, nostalgic passion counterposed to philosophical calm." — Ross Taylor, https://artsfuse.org/290061/poetry-review-the-infinite-field-from-the-personal-to-the-political/
"I cannot read these poems without hearing the echoes of longing in Robert Duncan's 'Often I Am Permitted to Return to the Meadow.' And I am glad Alice Templeton has welcomed me to her infinite field." — Trina Gaynon, https://www.calyxpress.org/reviews/the-infinite-field-by-alice-templeton/
"Alice Templeton crafts poems of clarity, insight, and beauty. Memories of childhood and homeland as a 'farm child' in Tennessee mingle with contemporary loss and dread, all illuminating an abiding faith in the necessity of paying attention... These poems deliver stunning images and real wisdom, affirming the poet's commitment to being an active participant in a world 'where nothing goes to waste.' I loved it." — G Walsh, Amazon.com
