First and Last Words [Paperback]

Fred Chappell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Afternoons With Allen
Bee
Calgari By Dreamlight
Dipperful
Dogs
The Garden
The Gift To Be Simple
How The Job Gets Done
Ideally Grasping The Actual Flower
Legions
Literature
Meanwhile
My Hand Placed On A Rubens Drawing: 1
My Hand Placed On A Rubens Drawing: 2. Woman With Crossed Hands
My Hand Placed On A Rubens Drawing: 3.
Observers
Patience
Pierrot Escapes
A Prayer For The Hanged Man
Proposition Iva.
Reader
Remodeling The Hermit's Cabin
Scarecrow Colloquy
Score
Slow Harbor
Stoic Poet
Subject Matter
Teller
Tolstoy's Bear
Visitation
Voyagers
The Watchman
Webern's Mountain
Word
Years Afterward
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr (March 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807114871
• ISBN-13: 978-0807114872
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chappell's best?, May 20, 2004

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Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: First and Last Words (Paperback)

Fred Chappell, First and Last Words (Louisiana State U., 1989)

If every poem in Fred Chappell's eighth collection, First and Last Words, were as good as "An Old Mountain Woman Reading the Book of Job," Fred Chappell would have written, hands down, the finest book of poetry released during the twentieth century. They aren't, not all of them, but a fair number are good enough to put this book in, say, the top twenty, sharing the rarefied air of Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End, Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle, Hayden Carruth's Collected Shorter Poems, and other such lights.

First and Last Words, a book that can loosely be called the beginning of Chappell's modern period, is where the poet turned slightly from the hardcore imagist work he'd been doing previously and looked toward a more abstract notion of poetry. He did so, however, without falling prey to the vagueness (or, lord help us, the idea that poems should be "message-based") that turns so many potential poets into unreadable hacks. Nowehere is this better illustrated than in "An Old Mountain Woman Reading the Book of Job."

"...She moves her lips to read but does not speak.
What is there to answer these terrible words,
To these sharp final words that engrave the fate
Of a hammered old man?..."

Beautifully rendered images combine with musings of characters, animals, even the elements at times. First and Last Words is brilliant, and deserves to be on the short shelf. **** ½