SOURCE: Walker, Jeanne Murray. “Ways to Move Beyond the Self.” Shenandoah 44 (summer 1994): 111-26.

In the following excerpt, Walker offers a positive assessment of C, praising Chappell's verse as “vulnerable and affectionate.”

The title of Fred Chappell's latest book, C, advertises what kind of book it is. It calls out flamboyantly See! spelling it with the Roman numeral C, both to signal its debt to the past and to advertise that it contains a hundred poems. The book is a bricolage of riddles and puns, translations and references to the classics. It is unashamedly satirical and irreverent. It pilfers from its elders, happily giving credit where credit is due. It is as full of good fun as anything to come down the pike for a long time.

Confessional poets come in for ribbing:

You've shown us all in stark undress The sins you needed to confess. If my peccadilloes...