Chase Twichell

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. She was married to novelist Russell Banks from 1989 until his death in 2023. She has taught at Princeton University, Warren Wilson College, Goddard College, University of Alabama, and Hampshire College. Many of Twichell's poems are heavily influenced by her years as a Zen Buddhist student of John Daido Loori at Zen Mountain Monastery, and her poetry in the book The Snow Watcher shows it. 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."

• Collections * * • 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 • Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected • Roadkill — 2014 • Featherweight — 2022 • 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)