Product Description: Solitary, graceful, and contemplative, cats have inspired poets from Charles Baudelaire to Margaret Atwood to serve as their chroniclers and celebrants. They have appeared, wrapped in their inscrutability, in verse both sensual and spiritual, weary and whimsical...read more

Product Description: In this sharply innovative collection, renowned poet Fred 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 contained, framed, supported by an outer -- the two interdependent, sometimes supplementary, often contrary...read more

Product Description: Jess’s childhood is spent peacefully on a farm in the mountains of North Carolina with his parents and grandmother. Every so often his life is happily interrupted by visits from his eccentric relatives, such as his womanizing uncle Luden who sought fortune in California, his uncle Zeno and his endless stories, his volatile uncle Gurton and his impressive beard, the country singer Samantha Barefoot, and his uncle Runkin, who travels with his coffin in search of the perfect epitaph...read more

An assortment of Christmas stories, essays, and illustrations celebrates Southern authors, including tales by Bailey White, Rick Bass, Ellen Gilchrist, Marianne Gingher, George Singleton, Michael Parker, Steve Yarbrough, Lynne Barrett, Bret Anthony Johnston, Stephen Marion, and Aaron Gwyn.

Product Description: This first novella by Win Neagle is a rollicking good read about a treehouse architect, his stripper girlfriend, a house-burgling germaphobe, a washed-up dentist and his shopaholic wife. It's a rollercoaster of laughs in a zany, whimsical exploration of life...read more

Product Description: In Meeting the Professor, Alexander Blackburn tells the story of growing up as the son of William Blackburn, the legendary professor of English at Duke University. Before his death in 1972, William Blackburn formed strong mentor-protégé relationships with such students as William Styron, Reynolds Price, Fred Chappell, and Guy Davenport, to name only a few...read more

This collection of humorous and satiric verse takes its title from that thoroughly southern term meaning irreverent retort, ironic remark, or scoffing observation. The ancient Roman poet Juvenal noted that his world made it hard not to write satire. Fred Chappell, finding his contemporary era analogous to that of imperial Rome, has in Backsass given in to the impulse for invective and mockery. The aim of satirists is to improve the moral tenor of society, and they approach this goal by first causing us to laugh at ourselves. Brandishing his lexical sword, Chappell ribs our shortcomings, offers tonic advice, and occasionally sheds a tear for our fallen ideals. Some poetry is fine wine. Backsass is the driest of martinis.

Product Description: An anthology of seventeen of the South's most celebrated contemporary poets. Advertising. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The occasion might be a holiday or a wedding, a christening or a funeral, and a family is gathered on the eve to eat, drink, talk, and cast eyes upon each other. Like all relations, the extended family in Fred Chappell’s Family Gathering has its foibles and strengths―oddballs and know-it-alls, hussies and historians, sparring spouses and model marriages. More than anything, this family loves gossip. Chappell portrays its members one and all in a series of sharply limned character sketches. In this crowd of strangers we may find personalities familiar, maybe too familiar. Perhaps we may even find a glimpse or two of ourselves.Framed by the observations of Elizabeth, “age eight, / Priss-proud in her finery and bored / Bored bored,” the collection introduces ebullient Cousin Marjorie, self-satisfied Uncle Einar, evasive Cousin Lilias, cunning Aunt Wilma, aged Uncle Nahum, convivial Uncle Hobart, confusing Aunt Alicia―set down in poems terse, witty, sympathetic, thoughtful, and satiric. Cousin Elmer “tends the family tree, / Shaping it to topiary rare / And strange as he trims a little here and there / And lops some ugly branches drastically.” Cousin Lola “charts her paramours / On a performance scale from One to Ten / And then announces publicly the scores.” Uncle Brit “cuts you off before you say / Two sentences and lets you know / He knows already what you think / And what you think is pretty dumb.” And Aunt Agnes, ever forgiving, “recognizes what we are, / Yet holds us in affection / As steadfast as the morning star, / As if our faults had no connection / With the persons we are within.”Although there is no continuous story line, the poems in Family Gathering almost amount to a piece of fiction. We leave these lines with full knowledge of the characters―their personalities, prejudices, idiosyncrasies, and intricate relationships with one another. Chappell gives us gossip, but also gossip parodied. If your family is like most, sparks of recognition will leap from every page. With results like those of the Polaroids taken by the family photographer, Chappell “makes us look as scary / As old woodcuts in a bestiary― / But maybe, after all, that’s us.”Varied, humorous, and, above all, true, Family Gathering is pure mean fun. (view table of contents)

Mystery and comedy intermingle as Jess Kirkman returns to his North Carolina mountain home to care for his sick mother and to deal with the possessions of his late father, only to discover that his father had led a secret existence. Reprint. 17,500 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Book by Chappell, Fred

Jess, a ten-year-old, grows up amongst a large group of eccentric relatives on his parents' farm (view table of contents)

When Jess Kirkman returns to his hometown in the North Carolina mountains ten years after his father's death, he finds, in a hidden workroom, a map, a strange machine, and hints about a secret side of his father's life. 20,000 first printing. Tour. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: A New Plèiade is a celebration of close literary friendships among seven eminent American poets -- Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, R. H. W. Dillard, Brendan Galvin, George Garrett, David R. Slavitt, and Henry Taylor. The affection, fun, and mutual respect of this happy association of poets have resulted in this anthology, in which the selection from the work of each was made by the contributor whose name precedes his or hers alphabetically...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander...read more

A collection of essays from the author's tenure as poetry critic for The Georgia Review examines the literary works of such authors as Alfred Corn, William Matthews, Alan Shapiro, and other talents, as well as the author's own writings. (view table of contents)

As his grandmother lies dying and her family gathers around her, young Jess Kirkman remembers all the stories she has passed down, sharing the wisdom and sweetness of life from generation to generation. Reprint. 30,000 first printing. Tour. NYT.

Product Description: James Christopher - publisher, husband, and father of two - is headed for trouble. Once a North Carolina farm boy who grew up hoeing corn, fighting with his cousin, and listening to his grandmother read from the Bible, James resigns from his job for no apparent reason, drinks too much, fails in his attempt to take up writing, and, following the advice of a skirt-chasing rogue, has an affair with a woman he dislikes...read more