Midquest by Fred Chappell
"Midquest" is a four-volume poetry collection by Fred Chappell, exploring themes of introspection, family, and the elemental forces of nature. Each volume—titled "River," "Bloodfire," "Wind Mountain," and "Earthsleep"—corresponds to one of the four ancient elements: water, fire, air, and earth. The collection unfolds over twenty-four hours of the poet's life, with each book containing eleven poems that reflect different states of mind and experiences. Chappell employs a variety of poetic forms to convey a rich tapestry of personal and familial narratives, often drawing upon his roots in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.
The work features a character known as "Old Fred," representing a demographic sample of a boy transitioning from rural life to urbanity, seeking to reconnect with his cultural heritage. Central to "Midquest" are themes of love, faith, and existential contemplation, with references to biblical ideas and personal experiences that blend humor and gravity. Chappell's writing showcases a deep reverence for nature and familial bonds, as well as a critical perspective on organized religion, inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of life and spirituality. This rich interplay of form and content makes "Midquest" a significant contribution to American poetry, characterized by its lyrical beauty and profound introspection.
On this Page
Midquest by Fred Chappell
First published: Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981
Genre(s): Poetry
Subgenre(s): Autobiography; lyric poetry; narrative poetry
Core issue(s): Awakening; beauty; life; love; marriage
Overview
To employ the full range of poetic forms that he had mastered, Fred Chappell drew up an intricate plan for Midquest, the four-volume compilation of verse that at the midpoint of a man’s life recollects and takes stock of his origins, his accumulated experiences, and his sense of how he might make use of what he has learned. Each of the four separate but interlinked books—River (1975), Bloodfire (1978), Wind Mountain (1979), and Earthsleep (1980)—focuses on one of the ancient elements of the cosmos—water, fire, air, and earth. Each book consists of eleven poems that cover twenty-four hours of the poet’s life from four different perspectives, although in many cases, there are extended recollections of experiences that occurred at the given hour on previous occasions. As Chappell explains, the numbers are carefully chosen and “obviously important,” because “four is the Pythagorean number representing World, and 4 x 11 = 44, the world twice, interior and exterior, Etc., etc.” The firm structure was necessary because Chappell wanted to employ a wide variety of verse forms, each one representing “different states of mind.”
For instance, “The River Awakening in the Sea,” the first poem in the book, is an open-verse interior monologue in which the poet rapturously exclaims his love for his wife in vivid, lyric language, using image clusters that convey a sense of the body alive and crackling with energy. The second poem, “Birthday 35: Diary Entry,” is a reflective meditation that sets the situation, a series of couplets following Dante’s well-known initiating statement “Midway in this life I came to a darksome wood” that forms the beginning of the second couplet. The third poem, “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet,” is an extended monologue with interpolations functioning as a commentary on her thoughts. The sixth poem, “Dead Soldiers,” introduces Virgil Campbell, a maverick individualist and a loose analogue for Dante’s presentation of the Roman poet Vergil as a guide.
The seventh poem, “My Grandfather Gets Doused,” is a tight arrangement of triads with an aba, bcb rhyme scheme deftly maintained through thirty-one stanzas before a four-line close. Chappell’s maintenance of this pattern with an occasional slant rhyme but without straining or forcing the form is characteristic of his proficiency. The ninth poem, “Science Fiction Water Letter to Guy Lillian,” enables the poet to bring in some of his literary friends and also operates as a kind of tour de force of compression in which Chappell gives some indication of the sort of speculative fiction he might turn to if so inclined. The last poem, “The River Again Seeks the Sea,” frames the first one, completing a unit and projecting the poet and his wife into a plausible future.
Chappell says that “With this variety of forms I hoped to suggest a kind of melting pot of American quality,” and in accordance with his family’s heritage in the Blue Ridge mountain country of western North Carolina, he chose “that elder American art form, the sampler” as his model. Each poem is like a distinctive stitch or patch of fabric in a quilt. Within each book, there are additional organizing principles. The first poem in each book balances the last one, “and so on inward,” but the sixth poem—the middle point—in each book stands alone, independent, just as its subject Virgil Campbell does. The fifth one is an interior monologue, with the flow of consciousness becoming more formal as the poet discerns and directs a growing sense of order in his life. Each separate book is devoted primarily to members of the poet’s family, River to his grandmother and grandfather, Fire to his father, Earthwind to an extended clan in a family reunion, and Wind Mountain is more generalized, as in the brief sketch with the poet, his wife, and Reynolds Price in conversation (“Hallowind,” set on Halloween, 1961).
The narrative consciousness is that of “Old Fred,” the poet’s persona who, Chappell notes, “is no more myself than any character in any novel I might choose to write.” Chappell sees him as “to some extent a demographic sample,” a boy raised on a farm who moved to a city, shifted from labor on the land to work with his mind, and although “cut off from his disappearing cultural traditions,” is within the poem able to search for and rediscover his real values in a return to and a revitalization of an essential self. Without telling the reader too much, the poet also adds that his “deeper talents” are “apology and even recrimination,” and that for the reader “some solace may be taken” from the poem. Most significantly, “Old Fred” is rooted in his region, and for Chappell this means a constant exposure in his youth to the differing versions of the old-time religion based on the Baptist faith that his family, neighbors, teachers, and preachers followed.
Christian Themes
In his introduction to The Fred Chappell Reader (1987), Dabney Stuart asserts that “God and the Bible suffuse Midquest.” He points out that there are “descents into hell (’Cleaning the Well’), rebirths (’Bloodfire,’ ’Fire Now Wakening on the River’), and frequent pondering on flesh and spirit (’Firewood’).” It is the poet’s attitude toward these experiences that is most important, because he is both a representative of a region not that familiar to most outsiders and a keen-eyed, strong-minded commentator who is far from enamored of all of the area’s social, moral, and theological mores. In “Cleaning the Well,” the fourth poem in River, the poet as a boy is ready to accept his responsibilities, a typical hard task performed in December, the dark of winter, but is fully aware of the strange place he is descending toward. “Lord, I sank/ Like an anchor,” he recalls, mingling dread with a prayer for protection. Further down, he exclaims, “Whoo! It’s God/ Damn cold!” continuing to combat “pain, disgust, and fear,” while his entreaties are answered from above with an offhand humor—“Say, Fred, how’s it going down there?”—until he is hauled back to earth. At first relieved, he discovers the power of the experience, and “shut my eyes to fetch/ Back holy dark,” affirming his kinship with biblical predecesors (“Jonah, Joseph, Lazarus”) who returned after a dark vision. His conclusion “I had not found death good” is mitigated by his father’s casual “’Aw, you’re all right,’” which is effectively the motto for moments of fear like this one. Another vision of Hell, this one resembling Dante’s circles of the damned (poem 7 in Wind Mountain), is a wry commentary on some of Chappell’s poetic peers.
The poet’s amused but respectful portrayal of the communal religious mode is reflected in two other poems from River. The process of baptism is seen from two directions in poem 7, “My Grandfather Gets Doused” which is a high-spirited account of a reluctant, almost offhand baptism as his grandfather “hedged his final bet” in a “Cold river and a plague/ Of cold Baptist stares,” and a much more fervent recounting of his grandmother’s young womanhood and marriage in poem 8, where the crossing of a river is a sign of a true spiritual commitment. Chappell has a wary skepticism toward the extravagant, dogmatic fervor of the more organized religious institutions he encounters (“too many ragshank preachers”) while remaining very interested in the ways people express their faith in things.
His own faith is marked by his deep feeling for the natural world, as in “Fire Now Wakening on the River” (among many other poems), in which he describes himself as “fresh born at thirty-five,” a kind of resurrection from a dormant self, following a vivid romantic moment that he likens to “a forest of fire,” “green growth” and “boiled juices of poison oak.” The intellectual journey that the poet pursues tends to work against any easy acceptance of doctrine, and in “Firewood,” poem 5 in Bloodfire (the stream of conscious), he confesses, with respect to “Christmas/ on Earth” that “even as I recall the beautiful/ manifesto my faith flickers and dwindles.” Against this, he sets the power of his surroundings, claiming “I’m washed in the blood/ of the sun, the ghostly holy of the deep deep log.” In “Earthsleep,” he finds a true Eden, a divine place, in the love he shares with his wife, Susan.
The love that moves the sun and other stars
Sources for Further Study
Bizzaro, Patrick, ed. Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1997. A good overview of Chappell’s poetry, with several extended essays on Midquest.
Lang, John. Understanding Fred Chappell. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Discusses Midquest with respect to Dantean allusions and parallels with classical mythology.
Stuart, Dabney. Introduction to The Fred Chappell Reader by Fred Chappell. New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1987. Stuart’s introduction concentrates on Midquest.