What do you think?
Rate this book
Spring Garden: New and Selected Poems
Spring Garden selects poems from six of Fred Chappell's previous collections and adds to them some thirty new ones.
Seven sections on different themes compose the main body of the book, and each section is provided a prologue. A General Prologue and an Epilogue are supplied too, and all these taken together make up a loose and gentle narrative, a story of the poet classifying and selecting among his work while his wife, Susan, botanizes in their private garden. Their parallel labors completed, they look toward the approaching long twilight.
Chappell is known for designing his poetry books as wholes, and Spring Garden, though it represents the compositions of twenty-five years, is no exception. Its contents are varied but unified, its purposes serious but congenial. And though the volume is suffused with an elegiac tone, these pages contain surprises in plenty and friendly good humor.
Seven sections on different themes compose the main body of the book, and each section is provided a prologue. A General Prologue and an Epilogue are supplied too, and all these taken together make up a loose and gentle narrative, a story of the poet classifying and selecting among his work while his wife, Susan, botanizes in their private garden. Their parallel labors completed, they look toward the approaching long twilight.
Chappell is known for designing his poetry books as wholes, and Spring Garden, though it represents the compositions of twenty-five years, is no exception. Its contents are varied but unified, its purposes serious but congenial. And though the volume is suffused with an elegiac tone, these pages contain surprises in plenty and friendly good humor.
- GenresPoetry
157 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1995
2 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
Fred Chappell
106 books120 followersFred Davis Chappell retired after 40 years as an English professor at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was the Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 1997-2002. He attended Duke University.
His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Academie Française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.
His literary awards include the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
His 1968 novel Dagon, which was named the Best Foreign Book of the Year by the Academie Française, is a recasting of a Cthulhu Mythos horror story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic.
His literary awards include the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers, the Bollingen Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 31, 2013
Fred Chappell is the least well known great poet (or the greatest unknown poet) writing in America.
His roots are in the hill country of North Carolina, but the range of his mind is as wide as thought can be. He is a gifted technician and a wise man, and this shows clearly in this fine book of poems.
His roots are in the hill country of North Carolina, but the range of his mind is as wide as thought can be. He is a gifted technician and a wise man, and this shows clearly in this fine book of poems.
January 31, 2017
Fred Chappell is an extraordinary wordsmith. His poem "Narcissus and Echo" is my all-time favorite; I cannot get it out of my head. I especially enjoyed Poems of Fantasy and the Epilogue.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews