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Shadow Box: Poems
In this sharply innovative collection, renowned poet Fred Chappell layers words and images to create a new and dramatic poetic form―the poem-within-a-poem. Like the shadow box in the volume’s title, each piece consists of an inner world contained, framed, supported by an outer―the two interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary. For example, the grim but gorgeous “The Caretakers” is a landscape that reveals another image inside it. Chappell also introduces sonnets in which the sestet nests within the octet. Play serves as an important component, but the poems do not depend upon gamesmanship or verbal strategems. Instead, they delicately or wittily trace human feelings, respond somberly to the news of the world, and rejoice in humankind’s plentiful variety of attitudes and beliefs. Just as an x-ray can show the inner structure of a physical object, so the techniques in Shadow Box display the internal energies of the separate works.
With this new form―the “enclosed” or “embedded” or “inlaid” poem―Chappell broadens the expressive possibilities of formal poetry, intrigues the imagination in an entirely new way, and offers surprise and revelation in sudden flashes. At once revolutionary and traditional, Shadow Box contains an Aladdin’s trove of surprises.
With this new form―the “enclosed” or “embedded” or “inlaid” poem―Chappell broadens the expressive possibilities of formal poetry, intrigues the imagination in an entirely new way, and offers surprise and revelation in sudden flashes. At once revolutionary and traditional, Shadow Box contains an Aladdin’s trove of surprises.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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32 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.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 8, 2022
Chappell has had an important place on my bookshelves for years and I appreciate this collection, as well!
November 10, 2022
An intricate and amazing feat! And a rewarding delight.
September 14, 2015
“Poetry is meant to be read aloud.” That is what I was taught in the 8th grade. I still remember my teacher, Mrs. Chadwick, standing in front of the classroom, punctuating each word for emphasis. A few days later, she had us bring a poem of our choice and read it to the class. I selected lyrics to a song by Megadeth. It was poetry to my thirteen-year-old ears. The memory sticks out because I caused a minor scandal—the lyrics contained an objectionable word (another name for a female dog). I read it aloud with relish and enjoyed my classmates’ reactions.
By the time I was in college, I understood that poetry was more than just setting lyrics to music. I had come to think of poetry as a form of drama—something to be performed, not just read aloud. I was particularly attracted to unconventional poetry—like that of E. E. Cummings—and the challenges and surprises that came with figuring out how to read it aloud.
The poems in Fred Chappell’s Shadow Box are definitely meant to be heard. Because of their unique style, however, they also must be seen—each poem in the collection contains a poem within a poem.
The description on the book jacket explains it best:
Read it aloud once all the way through. Then read it again, focusing on just the italicized parts. Then again, reading only the unitalicized text. With each reading you find yourself being drawn into the image of this elderly woman, so much so that you feel you are standing with her as she makes this discovery.
A lesser poet might attempt to shoehorn words together to make this poem-within-a-poem technique work. However, Chappell’s poems-within-poems feel natural, never forced. As brilliant as this technique is, it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if it weren’t for the profundity of his words.
I am not a poet and I fear that I cannot sufficiently state how amazing this book is. So, instead, I will conclude with poet Sarah Lindsay’s thoughts on Shadow Box:
By the time I was in college, I understood that poetry was more than just setting lyrics to music. I had come to think of poetry as a form of drama—something to be performed, not just read aloud. I was particularly attracted to unconventional poetry—like that of E. E. Cummings—and the challenges and surprises that came with figuring out how to read it aloud.
The poems in Fred Chappell’s Shadow Box are definitely meant to be heard. Because of their unique style, however, they also must be seen—each poem in the collection contains a poem within a poem.
The description on the book jacket explains it best:
“Like the shadow box in the volume’s title, each piece consists of an inner world contained, framed, supported by an outer—the two interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary.”
“In the Retirement Home: Revenant”
Cleaning her comb, she finds a remnant trace—
and sighs. She lays this single hair, this one
revenant that gives lie to truth, a lone
survivor, across the palm of her hand; her gaze
transfixed conjures in near despair to erase
from mind the glory that was Youth, this sun-
shine thread, the grandeur that was Blonde, now done:
one golden strand among the thousand grays.
Read it aloud once all the way through. Then read it again, focusing on just the italicized parts. Then again, reading only the unitalicized text. With each reading you find yourself being drawn into the image of this elderly woman, so much so that you feel you are standing with her as she makes this discovery.
A lesser poet might attempt to shoehorn words together to make this poem-within-a-poem technique work. However, Chappell’s poems-within-poems feel natural, never forced. As brilliant as this technique is, it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive if it weren’t for the profundity of his words.
“Shadow Box” (stanza 2)
Poor Ghost, you are no more than a guess
Of priest and sage, no more than nothingness dressed out
In cobweb rhetoric, wherein the mind in doubt
To calm itself must try to find its nakedness
A mortal sheltering for a time so brief
On earth its grave distress is its whole life.
I am not a poet and I fear that I cannot sufficiently state how amazing this book is. So, instead, I will conclude with poet Sarah Lindsay’s thoughts on Shadow Box:
“Fred Chappell’s poems-within-poems are serious play, verbal origami in dimensions of heart, mind, and spirit. They engage our brains whole, that we may delight in their skill as we dwell on their weight.”
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September 2, 2009This is a remarkable book, in which each poem--all formal--is ingeniously embedded with another formal poem that works to support, contradict, illuminate, echo, or transform the larger "container" poem. I am still trying to get my mind around how Fred does it. One of the most original and beautiful books of poems I have read in some time.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews