PZI Events Calendar
W E L C O M E to the PZI Events Calendar! Here you will find all upcoming events and registration links for PZI Zen Online retreats, sesshins, and weekly meditations & talks. Search by individual event, day, or month. Save to your Google Calendar or iCal Calendar. No experience required to participate. All event times are Pacific Time. Questions? Contact Lucas at PZI Support.
F E A T U R E D
April 26: What Is This Light That Everybody Has? – Deep Sit Sunday Zen with John Tarrant & Tess Beasley
May 7–10: Say A True Word & I Will Stay The Night – Open Mind Retreat with John Tarrant, Tess Beasley, & Allison Atwill
June 8–14: Dragons & Tigers, Oh My! – Our Great Summer Sesshin with John Tarrant & PZI Teachers
- This event has passed.
ZEN LUMINARIES: Things as It Is and Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been – Jon Joseph in Conversation with Poet & Teacher Chase Twichell
Chase Twichell has published eight books of poetry including Things As It Is (2018) and Horses Where Answers Should Have Been (2010), and is currently working on a new collection. She began a lay Zen practice in the mid-1990s at Zen Mountain Monastery under John Daido Loori, and her poetry and practice have been co-mingled since then.
“Zen threw me a big curve ball,” she has said. “There is almost no metaphor in Chinese poetry: Zen tries to see things as they are, without the spin.”
Chase’s poems have appeared in many publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Nation. In addition, she has taught poetry at Princeton University, the University of Alabama, and Hampshire College.
THINGS AS IT IS
Last night my hand began writing
in the hand of some future me,
as if a branch in wind had scribbled
on freshly fallen snow.
In the dark, coyotes called
back and forth in the bird-silence.
I put down the pen and went outside,
stood listening to wind in snow’s translation.
Wild dogs, teach me
a few of your words before I die.
HIS ABSENCE
His absence is hard to pin down.
No martini glasses in sight
no secret ashtrays.
I can ask him anything–
locked in a dark library.
all that he knew and remembered is lost to us both.
And the whole world of the night
has gone missing.
Including the scent of our joy.
Chase Twichell’s poems are among my favorites ever written. Often brash, always vivid, smart, and lyrical, pointing toward essential things—this is a marvelous and rich body of work.
—Tony Hoagland
Short Bio
Chase Twichell was born in 1950, and grew up in Connecticut and the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Things as It Is (Copper Canyon, 2018).
After teaching for many years (Hampshire College, the University of Alabama, Princeton University), she left academia to found Ausable Press, a not-for-profit publisher of contemporary poetry, which was acquired by Copper Canyon in 2009.
From 2013 to 2016 Twichell served as Chair of the Kate and Kingsley Tufts Awards Jury.
She recently taught in the Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.
A longtime student in the Mountains and Rivers Order at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, she splits the year between the Adirondacks and Saratoga Springs, NY.
source: https://www.chasetwichell.com/about
Jon Joseph Roshi of San Mateo Zen and PZI created this series to support the hardworking innovators and shining voices of modern Zen: scholars, writers, poets, translators, activists, artists, teachers, and more.
All proceeds for each event, including teacher dana, go directly to the guest speaker. Event attendees are encouraged to give as generously as you are able, so we can offer deep thanks to Luminaries guests.
Our suggested donation is $10 for PZI Members and $12 for Non-Members, but the scale slides from zero depending on one’s ability to contribute. We also greatly appreciate Patrons, who help support the program with larger gifts of $25—$250.
