C: Poems

Fred Chappell has long been considered one of the South's finest writers of both fiction and poetry. C not only provides abundant justification for that assessment but also makes clear the inadequacy of the geographical stricture; Chappell is indeed a writer of world-class stature. C is of course the roman numeral for one hundred - the precise number of poems that appear in this dazzling collection. Delicate, highly wrought miracles of compression and insight, these pieces gleam with passion, humor, and intelligence. Like many things that gleam, however, they also have sharp edges, and while they may make us laugh, they can also wound. Chappell himself perhaps voices this warning most eloquently in "Proem":. In such a book as this,/ The poet Martial says,/ Some of the epigrams/ Shall have seen better days,/ And some are hit-or-miss;/ But some - like telegrams - / Deliver intelligence/ With such a sudden blaze/ The shine can make us wince. At times Chappell's tone is acerbic, as in this sly comment on the self-indulgence of some confessional poets: "If my peccadilloes were so small / I never would undress at all," a couplet that would surely draw a delighted chuckle from Alexander Pope himself. With the apparent effortlessness of a master, Chappell also can suffuse a poem with sensual wonder; in "A Glorious Twilight," for example, an ecstatic speaker rhapsodizes about a woman painting her nails "such a brilliant shade of bright / she seems to have sprouted 22 fingers." And sometimes his jeweler's eye and the sheer artfulness of his language align the shutters of our perception so precisely that we can see for a hushed instant the incandescence of the everyday moment, "As common as air, / Startling as fire." Satirical or elegiac, bitter or rejoicing, giddy or profound, each of these one hundred poems is unnervingly alive. All readers who delight in observing an artist at the height of his powers are sure to find C both an inspiration and an eloquent reminder that

Library Journal

The Roman numeral of the title refers to the 100 lyrics that constitute Chappell's latest book. Written under the demanding influence of the Latin epigrammatist Martial, these tightly armatured, rigorously formal poems would in spirit find welcome in both the Roman and English Augustan ages. Brief, witty, and often tart, the poems skewer modern times (``The morning headlines write our satire for us''), academe (``Blossom's footnotes never shirk/ The task of touting his own work''), and other subjects with equal zest. But nectar is served with the venom, as in pieces like ``A Field of Orchard Grass'': ``Feminfinite sea, wavelight breaking/ on the afternoon like the silence of harps.'' Not every poem earns its existence or feels comfortable in the 1990s, but the impressive display of prosodic skill is in itself enjoyable.-- Fred Mura tori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, N.Y.