The World It Was - by Chase Twichell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An elegiacal collection looks unflinchingly at the degradations of the planet and the human body with an urgent appeal to live fully and presently

Written in the wake of the COVID pandemic lockdown, mass ecological tragedy, a chronic illness diagnosis, and the death of Twichell's husband, The World it Was turns its gaze upon loss with unflinching lucidity. "Language is a door," Twichell writes--yet, in The World it Was, she circles that door warily, questioning whether words can ever grant true communion with what lies beyond them. As she travels between memories of her childhood and reflections on her aging body, Twichell's signature attentiveness and restraint calls the reader to build a dwelling in the uneasy space between presence and grief. Part elegy, part meditation, The World It Was listens for the quiet intelligence of nature even as it mourns what has been destroyed. What remains is a grief that refuses consolation, instead insisting upon the necessity of seeing, naming, and being fully alive inside the brief body and the dying world.

Review Quotes

Praise for Chase Twichell

The Ghost of Eden - "In this impressive fourth collection, Twichell investigates human destruction of the natural world. She conveys the enormity of the subject with unflinching intelligence, all the while rejecting sentimentality, blame and solutions.
"--Publisher's Weekly

Perdido - "I know of no contemporary writer in any genre who evokes eros so convincingly as Chase Twichell does."--Richard Tillinghast, Parisan Review

"Her imagery, usually pleasing enough in itself, is never just flashy: it urges the speaker toward statement, personal disclosure, and intimations of vulnerability."--Chicago Review

Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been - "At the heart of her writing is a calming reverence, much like zazen, the act of sitting for meditation. Indeed, these poems are meditative and calming, yet questioning."--Karla Hurston, Library Journal

The Snow Watcher - "Chase Twichell has developed through five published collections an instantly recognizable poetic voice: soft-spoken, economical to the point of austerity, yet graced by flashes of wit and passion."--Greg Johnson, The Georgia Review

About the Author

Chase Twichell has published eight books of poetry, most recently Things As It Is and Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems, which won both the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Artists Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The founder of Ausable Press, a publisher of contemporary poetry, since 1996 she has been a student in the Mountains and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery.