CoPo

 Response to Outside Poetry Reading:  Fred Chappell reads his work at Thursday Poems, Nov.15, 2007

The work of Fred Chappell was relatively new to me on hearing him read November fifteenth. However, I was prepared for the breadth and depth of his work-the incredible range of subject matter and form to free-verse, to other genres as well. His reading was unorthodox and incredibly endearing. Rather than hinder, his soft mountain accent lilted his poems, giving them a new cantor, stressing words I hadn’t stressed in my own private readings of them, and shedding new meaning.

He did something else which I cherish in a live poetry reading, he “jabbered” (his own word) between poems, providing insight into their creation. His own career spans so many decades and so many volumes (including a series of four novels, paralleled by four volumes of poetry, belonging to the four elements…an epic, intricate meta-work that intrigues me), that he felt called to delve into the inspiration for his variety of poems. The seemingly simple, and incredibly approachable, man revealed his detailed knowledge of botany, for his “garden poems,” the richness of his own memories, and his ability to translate German and French lyrics for the purposes of his “nesting” poems. Within all of these specific introductions to poems, Chappell began to reveal something beautiful to all present-the methodology of a poet is one of astute attention, intention, meticulousness, and a concern with the intricate, and knowledge of all kinds. I appreciated his philosophy of poetics as much as his poems.
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Original post by Whitney