Ghost of Eden

by Chase Twichell

Vividly realized, emotionally gripping, these poems of Chase Twichell's confront the crucial issue of our the death of nature as we have known it. The Adirondacks, with their beauties and dangers, are the setting for many of the poems. They are inhabited by the fox, the bear, the fishercat. One is rabid, another dead, the third a life-sustaining dream. The "ghost" is both the shadow of the paradise we have so carelessly ruined, and the poet herself, from whom the elegy for it is wrenched. These are dark poems, frontal and unflinching, but they are illuminated by the poet's powerful love for the earth, and by the heightened, surprising joys forced from a new intimacy with her own mortality.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Brian Brogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have enjoyed all her work. Consistently excellent.

[Ron Mohring · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is by far my favorite of her books; I want to give it a 4.5.

[scarlettraces]

There was a little too much reflection on the inevitable mingling of one's grey ashes with the (fertile/infertile depending on how much humanity will have managed to fuck it up) black earth. All true & I for one feel the planet will be a lot better off without us, but the effect for me was like a stuck record.