Midquest: A Poem

by Fred Chappell

Together now, the four poems River, Bloodfire, Wind Mountain, and Earthsleep counterpoint one another in a grand symphony, Midquest. In what he has referred to as “something like a verse novel,” Fred Chappell has summoned up the rich veins of memory and brings this to bear on the contemporary sensibility. Through the remarkable range of his poetic talent―in turns lyrical, dramatic, elegiac, mythic, and humorous―Chappell brings us to the this encounter with earth, air, fire, and water. The dynamic of their interrelation contains multitudes but also holds a pattern.

In his preface to the completed work, Chappell explains that “though he is called ‘Fred,’ the ‘I’ of the poem is no more myself than any character in any novel I might choose to write. . . . He was constructed, as was Dante’s persona, Dante, in order to be widely representative.” Chappell’s Fred has moved away from the land and the work of the hands to the city and the work of the intellect. In the memories he reviews at mid-life, he regains the values that he had thought were lost. In its mental reclamation, Midquest belongs in a long and vital southern tradition. In design, he tells us, its model was “that elder American art form, the sampler, each form standing for a different fancy stitch.”

Genres: Poetry

188 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1981

About the author

Fred 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.

Reviews

[Stephanie Ricker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I need some kindly professor to hold my hand through this one; I understood about half of it. Thank goodness for the preface or I would've been even more lost. As it was, the half-glimpsed images I did get were alluring and easily kept me reading through the more obscure places. In terms of technical skill, the book is seriously impressive and includes a host of different poetic formats and meters (I especially liked the foray into Old English alliterative verse). I need to come back and reread this in about ten years. I picked up my copy at a used bookstore years ago and it has the inscription "For Jamie--For the good old times!" from the author himself. Why did you let this one go, Jamie?

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael meets modern poet and is most-pleased.

[Rita Quillen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that informed every poetry book that came after. Enormously important book in 20th century American poetry....