River by Fred Chappell

"It is a joy to discover a poet with a sense of humor, a novelist's interest in people and his own language of praise. This rate combination makes Mr. Chappell's a unique voice, and it helps make River, with its dazzling variety of forms and tones, an ambitious and remarkable tour de force." - Guy Owen. Nobody has taught more distinguished Appalachian authors than Fred Chappell in his 40 years at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. And it would be tough to try to argue that any Appalachian writer of his generation (born in 1936) is more distinguished than he. Most of us can enjoy his poetry on the surface, but scholars can recognize additional layers of meaning and parallels he is making between his poems and other poems, legends, mythology, etc. This is the first of four volumes that Chappell called his"poetic autobiography," followed by Bloodfire, Wind Mountain, and Earthsleep and combined in a book called Midquest.This is his second book among almost 20 poetry volumes, a