Locales: Poems from the Fellowship of Southern Writers

by Fred Chappell, Fellowship of Southern Writers (Editor)

With a Foreword by George Garrett. The Fellowship of Southern Writers was founded in 1987 under the inspiration of Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging excellence and recognizing distinction in southern letters. Membership is by invitation only, and the group meets biennially and bestows prizes in fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Locales thus represents poetry of truly superlative quality, gathering works by Fellowship members and by esteemed writers who have won Fellowship awards for A.R. Ammons, James Applewhite, Wendell Berry, Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, James Dickey, George Garrett, Rodney Jones, Andrew Hudgins,T.R. Hummer, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Morgan, Dave Smith, Henry Taylor, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles Wright. Chosen by Fred Chappell, these poems reflect the truth that the general is most securely held to when in the grip of the particular. They are not just specific, not only regional, but tightly joined to highly detailed places within the southern sphere, wielding a far greater force and universal application than a placeless poetry might have. This "southern gazette with mountains and valleys, forests and farms, rivers and marshes, graveyards and barrooms," as Fred Chappell describes the volume, offers a lyrical topography of the southern-and of the American-spirit that is inviting, entertaining, always surprising, and sometimes ominous. Far from being of merely regional interest, Locales demonstrates that there is no place, however small or remote or obscure, that cannot call forth a resonant outcry of the heart.

Genres: Poetry

134 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2003

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

[Audra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible, beautiful, moving collection of work. One problem...lack of diversity of voices.