The Snow Watcher [Hardcover]

Chase Twichell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1998

"Reading the poems in The Snow Watcher is like breathing cold air.... they are full of sharp observation, both of the world and herself, unsentimental poems with a sinewy intellectual toughness"—The Washington Post

The Snow Watcher is a sequence of poems that asks a single obsession question: what is the self? The book is a radical re-envisioning of what makes us human rather than animal, human rather than insentient. The poems delve into parts of childhood more comfortably forgotten, and into the ancient stillness of the monastery (Twichell is a student of Zen Buddhism). In both realms the known self dissolves, or is intentionally dismantled, and what is left is something impossible to name, though its startling voice can be heard in the austere, near-empty rooms of these poems.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For a certain current of American poetry, spare language and deliberate pacing imply zazen, the Buddhist discipline of seated meditation. Twitchell (The Ghost of Eden) draws on that tradition in this fifth collection, while deliberately pulling lyric and memory into the meditative state. Where Gary Snyder might be loosely rhapsodic or Lucien Stryk tautly ruminative, Twitchell is after a middle ground, and the result is often a compelling human tension. Forays into childhood memories acknowledge autobiographical discomfort: "It was autumn, the adult word for fall./ In school we saw a film called Reproduction./ The little snake-father poked his head/ into the slippery future,/ and a girl with a burned tongue was conceived." Other poems turn everyday thinkings-out-loud?at the window, the mower, the mirror?into sculpted meditations, or track the difficulties of stilling her restless mind ("I'm bad at it, impatient"). Zen-speak does overwhelm some images ("Snow holds back the dawn?/ an extra minute of lying here/ while the self sleeps on"), and some of the musings on language seem pat: "words telling secrets/ to no one but river and rain." But as with the volume's concluding poems, which address the reader directly ("I want you with me, and yet you are the end/ of my privacy") one feels certain of their immediacy.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

Altars
Animal Languages
Architecture
Arsonist And Fireman
Bees
The Black Triangle
Cat And Mirror
Cloud Of Unknowing
Decade
Disturbances Of Thought
Eleven Hours
Erotic Energy
Girl Riding Bareback
Glimpse
Hologram
Horse
The Horse-angel
Hunger For Something
Icicle
Ignorant Poem
Imaginary Dokusan: Autumn Rain
Imaginary Dokusan: Barking Dog
Imaginary Dokusan: Furnace
Imaginary Dokusan: Perfume
Imaginary Dokusan: Rat
Imaginary Dokusan: Stranger
Imaginary Dokusan: Thistle
Ink Stone
The Innocent One
Kerosene
Kid Music
A Last Look Back
Lilacs Again
Little Yellow Flowers
The Lost Birds
Makeshifts
Minor Problems
Mistake
Mountains And Rivers
My Skeleton
My Taste For Trash
My Toshiba
Mystery
Paint
Passing Clouds
Pine
Private Airplane
Roach Holder, Circa 1967
Road Tar
Saint Animal
Secrets
Silver And White Elegy
Snow
Solo
Stirred Up By Rain
Stone Steps
Stray
Summer Rain
Tea Mind
To The Reader: Blunt Elegy
To The Reader: If You Asked Me
To The Reader: Polaroids
To The Reader: The Language Of The Cloud
To The Reader: Twilight
Today's Lapses
Tulip
The Verge
Violence To Language
Visitors
The Voice Of The Air
Walking Meditation
The Wars
Weightless, Like A River
White Pine
Wild Mare
The Year I Got Rid Of Everything
Zaven, Wired & Tired
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Ontario Review Books; 1st edition (October 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865380929
• ISBN-13: 978-0865380929
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,241,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical and thoughtful synthesis of buddhism and americanism, November 19, 1998

By 

Matthew Rohrer -- [e-mail] (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Snow Watcher: Poems (Paperback)

I love the forthrightness of these poems. Chase Twichell's THE SNOW WATCHER is a book of some of the most convincing American zen poems I've ever seen. They are American in the sense that they are constantly subverting themselves, constantly questioning themselves, but at the same time they are beautiful and evocative and searching moments of clarity. There is a steady quietude that manages to peel back the layers of both the natural world and the self in a way that is both fresh and deeply historical.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steal this Book, May 3, 2000

By 

Renate Lewin - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Snow Watcher (Hardcover)

Actually,that's what happened to my copy. I was going through an ugly divorce. I am a Buddhist. A friend suggested reading this book through the Hard Time. I took it to a pub, had a beer or two too many, left without the book. Realised it was left two minutes later, went back, Too late! Gone. I figure whoever nabbed it was also in need of the clarity, the crystal limning, the in-your-face reality. The best book of poetry I've read in a decade. I think I'll order another copy.

5.0 out of 5 stars Probing and Playful, August 29, 2009

By 

Karl W. Nehring (Ostrander, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Snow Watcher: Poems (Paperback)

Spare but haunting poems reflective of Buddhist practice and an alert, probing mind. Some of the poems are subtly disturbing, hinting of dark times in the author's past, but others are hopeful and insightful. Twichell manages to convey a poetic persona that is both probing and playful. Overall, a crisp and bracing read.