Here to See It

In Benjamin Chase’s poems, we find a world capable of rich epiphany in what he calls this curious place / we’ve always known. If you would like to experience this world-or feel it afresh, this collection will show you how. Accessible, grounded in everyday wonder, beautifully crafted, and memorable, Chase’s debut is a radiant example of the radiance that’s there for the finding: a splendid debut. -David Rigsbee, author of This Much I Can Tell You

A child, rapt in attention to multiple reflections in parallel mirrors; the inhabitants of paintings by Hopper, anonymous, but frozen in scene and time; a canopy of trees over a parkway that frame a dazzling sunset and suddenly suggest the great kindling that enlightens the world. Benjamin Chase’s poems are brief because they are of the moment, in the moment, luminous and revelatory, full of grace and rich with the spiritual deeps that lie within and behind the surfaces of the world.

-Brian Clements, poet and editor

Look closely. The world, this curious place / we’ve always known, is, as Benjamin Chase shows us, stranger and more beautiful than we’ve noticed. The ordinary, the daily, the familiar, Chase shows us, in this lyrical and elegant book, can become extraordinary if we will just offer our patient and discerning gaze. Here to See It is a fine book, understated yet precise, engaged, distinctive. I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I have.

-Joe Ahearn, author of Five Fictions