Fred Chappell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Dabney Stuart

Critical Essay by Dabney Stuart

SOURCE: Stuart, Dabney. “Spiritual Matter in Fred Chappell's Poetry: A Prologue.” Southern Review 27, no. 1 (winter 1991): 200-20.

In the following essay, Stuart explores the role of spirituality in Chappell's verse, focusing on Lucretian and Christian perspectives.

Tanto giú cadde, che tutti argomenti a la salute sua eran già corti, fuor che mostrarli le perdute genté.

—Dante, Purgatorio, XXX, 136-138

Our faith must be earned from terror.

—Fred Chappell, Bloodfire, IX

I. Flesh and Spirit

The first two words of the title of this essay are a subdued version of Fred Chappell's more spritely rhymed phrase “attar of matter” (in “Firewood”). I intend, however, the same complementary attachment of terms. Chappell's phrase suggests, in sound as well as substance, that there is an essence embedded in matter and releasable from it, a sweet intangible spirit inexplicably meshed in the molecular arrangement of the elemental stuff of which all things, including human...
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