Chase Twichell (born August 20, 1950) is an American poet, professor, publisher, and, in 1999, the founder of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is ''Things as It Is'' (

Copper Canyon Press Copper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, founded in 1972 specializing exclusively in the publication of poetry. It is located in Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon Press publishes new collections of poetry by both popu ...

, 2018). ''Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been '' (

, 2010) earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000

Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award The Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards are a pair of American prizes based at Claremont Graduate University. They are given to poets for their collections of poetry written in the English language, by a citizen or legal resident alien of the U ...

. She is the winner of several awards in writing from the

New Jersey State Council on the Arts The New Jersey State Council on the Arts was founded in 1966 to support artistic activities in the state of New Jersey. It is funded by the New Jersey State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Art ...

, the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headq ...

and The Artists Foundation. Additionally, she has received fellowships from both the Guggenheim Foundation and the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federa ...

. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'', '' Field'', ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bost ...

'', ''

The Georgia Review ''The Georgia Review'' is a literary journal based in Athens, Georgia. Founded at University of Georgia in 1947, the journal features poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, and visual art. The journal has won National Magazine Awards for Fiction ...

'', ''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...

'', ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings ...

'', ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's ''The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', and '' The Yale Review''. Many of Twichell's poems are heavily influenced by her years as a

Zen Buddhist Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text=:ja:禅, 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a East Asian Buddhism, school of Mahayana, Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Ch ...

student of

John Daido Loori John Daido Loori (June 14, 1931 – October 9, 2009) was a Zen Buddhist rōshi who served as the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and was the founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order and CEO of Dharma Communications. Daido Loori received sh ...

Zen Mountain Monastery Zen Mountain Monastery (or, Doshinji, meaning Temple of the Way of Reality) is a Zen Buddhist monastery and training center on a forested property in the Catskill Mountains in Mount Tremper, New York. It was founded in 1980 by John Daido Loori ...

, and her poetry in the book ''The Snow Watcher'' shows it.Blue Flower Arts > Author Booking Agency > Chase Twichell Bio
She attended the Foote School in New Haven. In the Fall 2003 '' Tricycle magazine'' interview with Chase, she says, "Zazen and poetry are both studies of the mind. I find the internal pressure exerted by emotion and by a koan to be similar in surprising and unpredictable ways. Zen is a wonderful sieve through which to pour a poem. It strains out whatever's inessential." Twichell was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and earned her B.A. from Trinity College and her M.F.A. from the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wr ...

. She was married to novelist

Russell Banks Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...

from 1989 until his death in 2023. She has taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a requisite course of study, work an on-campus ...

Goddard College Goddard College is a progressive education private liberal arts low-residency college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle, Washington. The college offers undergraduate and grad ...

University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publi ...

, and

Hampshire College Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mo ...

.Ausable Press > About the Editor
Twichell was a judge for the 2011

Griffin Poetry Prize The Griffin Poetry Prize is Canada's most generous poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin. Before 2022, the awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. ...

Bibliography

Poetry

;Collections * * ''The Odds'' (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986) * ''Perdido'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991) * ''The Ghost of Eden'' (Ontario Review Press, 1995) * ''The Snow Watcher'' (Ontario Review Press, 1998) * ''Dog Language'' (Copper Canyon Press, 2005) * ''Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been'' (Copper Canyon Press, 2010) * ''Things as It Is'' (Copper Canyon Press, 2018) ;List of poems ;Anthologies edited * ''The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach'' (edited with Robin Behn: HarperPerennial, 1992) ;Translations * ''The Lover of God'', Poems by Rabindranath Tagore (Copper Canyon Press, 2003) (translated with Tony K. Stewart)

References

External links

Author Biography: ''PoetryNet'' > August 1998 > Chase Twichell

* ttp://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v3n1/poetry/twichell_c/index.htm Poems & Bio: ''Blackbird'' > Chase Twichell
Perceiving human consciousness through award-winning poetry
Hartford Trinity College ''Mosaic'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Twichell, Chase 1950 births Living people American women poets Poets from New York (state) Poets from Connecticut National Endowment for the Arts Fellows American Zen Buddhists Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni University of Iowa alumni Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni The New Yorker people 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers