SOURCE: McDowell, Robert. “Poetry Chronicle.” Hudson Review 50, no. 1 (spring 1997): 137-46.

In the following excerpt, McDowell offers a positive assessment of Spring Garden, calling the collection “well edited and full of pleasant surprises.”

Spring Garden: New and Selected Poems by Fred Chappell includes selections from six previous volumes plus thirty new poems. Chappell is an inventive formalist who can be funny and serious. “The Fated Lovers: A Story” is a superior sequence demonstrating this poet's range. Section seven, “A Glorious Twilight,” especially stands out. In it a wife paints her nails, and the brilliant color she applies transforms the house. Special attention to a common activity turns life into art. The segment, and the poem as a whole, honors the subtlety and quiet drama of the stuff that makes up everyday life and binds us together.

Many of the characters Chappell writes about are not so much recognizable, living...