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Dan Chiasson (; born May 9, 1971 Dan Chiasson at poets.org.) is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The Sewanee Review called Chiasson "the country's most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine Chao Wang Professor of English Literature and Chair of the English Department at Wellesley College.
Chiasson is the author of seven books: The Afterlife of Objects (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Natural History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America (University of Chicago Press, 2007), Where's the Moon, There's the Moon (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), Bicentennial (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014) and The Math Campers (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020). In February of 2026, Alfred A. Knopf will publish Chiasson's nonfiction book, , based in part on his own early memories of Mayor Sanders.
Bernie for Burlington is a both "biography of Bernie's political rise" and a memoir of what Chiasson calls "a very unusual American experiment, a modern city run by a charismatic socialist and his smart, young administration, during the eight years when Ronald Reagan was in the White House." Chiasson added "I'm actually one of the outcomes of the experiment, and so is my book, looking back on the transformation of Burlington and the thrilling rise of Bernie and his ideas." Nicholson Baker called it "a book we need right now," a "big, lovingly-woven, Whitmanesque wicker work of grievances and glories, home truths and triumphs." Robert Pinsky praised its "wild variety of stories, voices and characters," and added "Dan Chiasson of Burlington, Vermont and American poetry is a masterful narrator."
In addition to teaching at Wellesley, Chiasson has been affiliated with Boston University's Master of Fine Arts program, with NYU's program in Paris, France, and with the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Environmental Conference in Ripton, Vermont. He was a 2017 James Merrill House Fellow in Stonington, CT. He lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons.
Chiasson is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. He was the poetry editor (with Meghan O'Rourke), and later advisory editor, of the Paris Review. "Msthead",
''The Paris Review''.
His poems have been translated into many languages, including German by Jan Wagner. His ''Natural History'' was published as ''Naturgeschichte'' at Luxbooks, a publishing house focused on American poetry in bilingual editions. In the UK, he is published by [[Bloodaxe Books]].
He is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College. "About The Common".
| The anatomy of melancholy | 2001 | ||
| Nocturne | 2001 | ||
| From 'The Names of 1,001 Strangers' | 2017 | ||
| Obituary | 2014 | ||
| Self | 2000 | ||
| Swifts | 2008 | ||
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