Karen Chase

Some of you may have already encountered the poems of Karen Chase.  Her poems have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Gettysburg Review  and The New Republic, in the Norton anthologies Introduction to Literature and Introduction to Poetry,  in Billy Collins’ Poetry 180, and in two collections, Kazimierz Square and Bear. In 2007, however, she published a different kind of book – one that may be of special interest to readers of this publication.  The non-fiction Land of Stone: Breaking Silence through Poetry  (Wayne State University Press) is Chase’s account of two years during the decade she spent as Poet-in-Residence at a large psychiatric hospital outside of New York City.   Working one-on-one with a young man who refused to talk, she developed a technique that helped him break through his silence and begin to write poetry.  A gifted, intuitive teacher, she never violated her student’s privacy or dignity, nor did she overstep and confuse her role with that of the clinicians who were working with him in other ways.  Her technique, “I write a line/you write a line,” emphasized craft.  Pupil-teacher communication was about such things as metaphor and musicality. Remembering her own struggle to walk again when her legs were paralyzed from childhood polio helped her to do what she had to do to help her student.  Many of the poems they wrote together are included in this remarkable, sensitive and loving book, which was named the Bronze Medal winner of the 2008 Independent Publishers’ Book Award. 

Here, for our December offering, are three of  Karen Chase’s own poems.

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