Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been
New and Selected Poems
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
Publisher Description
“[Twichell’s] poems generate the requisite heat with the poet’s precise, original and frequently brilliant use of language. . . . A major voice in contemporary poetry.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Twichell’s poems] track the inner movements of one life with an unexpected freshness.” —The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly called Chase Twichell “a major voice in contemporary poetry,” and this long overdue retrospective supports the claim. Selected from six award-winning books, this volume collects the best of Twichell’s meditative and startling poems. A longtime student of Zen Buddhism, Twichell probes how the self changes over time and how the perception of self affects the history and meaning of our lives. Her poems exhibit a deep and urgent love of the natural world amidst ecological decimation, while also delving into childhood memories and the surprise and nourishment that come from radical shifts in perception.
What etiquette holds us back
from more intimate speech,
especially now, at the end of the world?
Can’t we begin a conversation
here in the vestibule,
then gradually move it inside?
What holds us back
from saying things outright?
Chase Twichell is the author of six books of poetry and the best-selling writer’s manual Practice of Poetry. She is the founding editor of Ausable Press and lives in rural New York with her husband, the novelist Russell Banks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twichell's first retrospective collection gathers poems from six previous books and adds nearly a book's worth of new poems, all in an accessible, plainspoken style of mostly free verse that renders poems as crystal clear as they are deep. Again and again, Twichell confronts the fact of loss and the transitory nature of life with acceptance and a melancholy hope spurred by close attention paid to the natural world: "Creatures are born from atoms, from air,/ parentless, and drift like satellites/ out of a snowy tree," reads one early poem. One of Twichell's greatest skills is to depict nature as transcendent without making it seem anything but plainly natural, if mysterious: "Gravity draws down to me a halo/ whipped up of holy dust// or dust from outer space." Many poems also reflect Buddhist attitudes, reasons, perhaps, for their deep calm and acceptance. "Now when I can't sleep/ I say as a prayer/ the names of all the little brooks," she says. The new poems confront mortality with the same willingness: "A door blew open, and a black river/ flowed into my house." Many readers will find a companion in this book.
