Source [Paperback]

Fred Chappell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The joint award of this year's Bollingen Prize in Poetry to John Ashbery and Fred Chappell came as a happy surprise to admirers of Chappell's Midquest tetralogy, a large and serious work that did not attract the attention many believe it deserved. In this new collection of lyrics, Chappell is freed of the exigencies of framework, and his powers seem to have responded with ever-greater enthusiasm. A serious end-of-the-world nightmare poem, "The Evening of the Second Day," contrasts with the comic celebration of "Recovery of Sexual Desire After a Bad Cold." The peculiarly rich Chappell diction, combining strictly poetic language with country dialect, is more effective than ever. Even with a masterpiece behind him, Chappell has not exhausted his gifts, as these virtuoso songs, prayers, elegies and fables prove. December
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Abandoned Schoolhouse On Long Branch
Afterseasons, Countershades
Awakening To Music
The Capacity For Pain
Charge
Child In The Fog
Establish
The Evening Of The Second Day
Exile
Forever Mountain
Fox And Goose
Here
Humility
Latencies
The Lost Carnival
Message
Music As A Woman Imperfectly Perceived
Music As Natural Resource
Narcissus And Echo
Nocturne
O Sacred Head Now Wounded
A Prayer For Slowness
A Prayer For The Mountains
A Prayer For Truthfulness
Recovery Of Sexual Desire After A Bad Cold
Rib
Seated Figure
Silent
Source
The Story
The Transformed Twilight
Transmogrication Of The Diva
Trolls
Urleid
The Virtues
Windows
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 57 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr; 1st edition. edition (September 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807112771
• ISBN-13: 978-0807112779
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,304,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., May 20, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Source: Poems (Hardcover)

Fred Chappell, Source (Louisiana State U., 1985)

Fred Chappell has developed, over the course of his career, an amazing (even for a poet) ability to see, and to record what he sees in such a way that it is both poetic and understandable. In Source, Chappell's seventh book of poems, he may have reached the height of his ability to do so during the early period of his career. The poems here are for the most part short, imagist evocations of pictures the speaker can see; nothing more, nothing less, leaving the reader to come up with any deeper meaning (assuming one is necessary, which often it isn't). In other words, much of what is in Source is the very essence of poetry. For example,

An ancient wound troubles the river
Where the horses drink their reed-spiked shadows.
The perfumed barge drifts by, bearing
a final viceroy to oblivion....
("Source")

Good, solid, easy-to-picture image, and the reader is left to determine whether he's watching a funeral procession, a garbage scow, or an invented metaphor for the death of the Old South (or any of a number of other possible interpretations). This is exactly what poetry is supposed to do, what it should be; would that more poets, or those who consider themselves poets, would read Chappell and understand that this is the kind of thing they should strive for. ****