Poet and novelist Fred Chappell will be at City Lights on Friday, August
7th at 7:00 p.m. to read from his new collection, entitled Shadow Box:
Poems, published by Louisiana State University Press.
In this innovative collection, 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 that is contained, framed, supported by an outer — the two of which are interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary. 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 trace human feelings, respond 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.
Chappell also has a new collection of stories coming out in November, and we’re delighted that he’ll be at the Great Smoky Mountains Book Fair here in Sylva on November 14th to promote that book as well as Shadow Box. Please see the story below for more information.