Family Gathering

By Fred Chappell

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807126268
• ISBN13: 9780807126264
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 62 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Wonderful Poetry

*Family Gathering* is a rare gift: a book that one can share with others. I first read the book after encountering some of Chappell's other poetry and prose and hearing him read at a conference. Making full use of rhyme and structure, Chappell weaves a tale of some kind of family gathering--the occasion isn't important. The fact that the family has congregated together is. Framed by poems about a young girl who can't understand's adults' need to talk everything to death at such gatherings, Chappell's book roams from person to person, introducing us to characters like Uncle Einar, a likable blow-hard who "smokes his big cigar." We also meet his wife, Aunt Wilma, who "makes him pay" for every mistake the old philanderer commits. We meet others as well, some named and some not. The strength of this approach is obvious: we all have these people in our families. We all know an Uncle Einar; we all have at least one outcast cousin; we all have that one aunt at our reunions who insists on taking everyone's picture. Chappell's poems are laugh-out-loud funny, a rarity these days when poetry tends to be about little but itself. *Family Gathering* is a book you can buy for those non-poetry poeple on your gift list. It'll show them that poetry can indeed be for everybody and needn't be an exclusive, elitist pursuit.

FAMILY GATHERING a Delight

Fred Chappell, one of our modern poetic masters, has given us a book that brings its reader no-holds-barred pleasure. Chappell renders his family portraits with wit and craft, using rhyme, for example, that makes us sit up and take notice, lift our ears, ready for more. This book is a loving, though sometimes caustic and, yes, sly, evocation of family. We finish reading it feeling as if we know these people, indeed have always known them. Chappell invites us onto the front porch, into the kitchen, the parlor, the upstairs and downstairs of a dwelling populated by an extended family as eccentric and memorable as our own.