Stardust by Dabney Stuartn”Not till the Hre is dying in the grate/nLook we for any kinship with the stars.”n— MeredithnSource by Fred Chappell, BatonnRouge, LA: Louisiana StatenUniversity Press.nThe post-Wodd War I shatterednvisions of Pound and EHot arenperhaps fundamentally less differentnfrom the incoherencies of Kerouac andnCorso, the randomly referential allegorynof Ashbery, or the associativenanarchy of Bly and Merwin than wenhave been taught. Our century seemsnmore whole the more of it we have tonlook on; one of its clearest characteristicsnis its overwhelmingly disconnectedndiversity. Yeats’s “things fall apart” hasnbecome the mellowest of understatements.nIn the context of such disorganization,nFred Chappell’s seventh volumenof poetry becomes illuminating. Atnfirst reading Source seems to participate,nboth in its overall structure and innparticular poems, in this chaos. Nothing,nit turns out, could be farther fromnthe truth.nThe center of the volume isn”Latencies.” It begins with an apparentlynstraightforward explanation of thenspeaker’s book-derived understandingnof the idea oi latency. But the imagensuggesting the idea keys rich evocations:nthe starsncome out, bright fishnet liftingnfrom darknessnthose brokennmany heroes we read the mindnwith.nThe motif of human curiosity interactingnwith itself as source and with thenexternal world returns at the end tonthose scattered stars through a modernnimage which echoes “heroes” dreadfully:nOr consider the young mannfishing the river. Now henDabney Stuart is author of Don’tnLook Back (LSU Press).nhas gone to be a soldier, henhas becomena latent garden of terriblenAmerican beauty rosesnwhich only the enemy bulletsncan make manifest.nWe can move from this poem tonalmost any other in the book, as spokesnfrom a hub. Most obvious, perhaps, isna lieder cycle spoken by a Vietnamnveteran who has difficulty returning tonhis life as a sculptor—his experiencesnin the war grate mercilessly against thenclassical, polished precedents of his art.nI reach into the crumbledncenturies and draw forthncherubs.nNymphs, and pediments, whichndo not overpowernThe chopper’s throaty throbnand the bamboonStraining back away and thenwhite grass warped downnWhere the stretcher-bearersntrotted stooped.nThe sequence flirts with Matthew Arnold’snresolution to “Dover Beach,”nbut, resisting the temptation to bencontent with “your slim white handsn[smoothing] my thigh,” concludes:nI have imagined the stars innclean white rows.nThat was strict insanity. Nownthey commingle with fleshnAnd shadow and stone andnbreath, a nebulanOf accident I thrust my handsninto until it vanishes.nThe shift to the galactic swirl as anmedium for the sculptor is concentricnwith the stellar dispersal ofn”Latencies.” This time, however, wenhave a real broken hero.nThe 11 poems grouped immediatelynafter “Latencies” are myths andnfables which offer another key to thentheoretical underpinnings of Source’snform. The self-sufficiency of thesennnpoems, belied by their brevity, indicatesnthat myth, legend, and folktalenare not so much forms we perceive ournexperience in, but actively ideal formsnthat determine the shape and nature ofnour experiences. It’s also possible thatnthese ideal forms are fragments of anlarger, ineffable design. One is remindednof Andrew Lang’s idea that thenstory was originally a monolith thatnbroke apart into all the particular storiesnwe live and tell, the Big Bangntheory recapitulated in sensibility.nWhich brings us back to “Latencies”nagain, and its image of stars asnbroken heroes. The entire openingnpoem, for instance, occurs in a fog innwhich solid objects “dissolve into spirit.”nIn “Nocturne” stars are “powder,”nfrost “emery.” The Queen Anne’snlace in “Here” is presented as a pointillistnmight see it. Clouds, snow, dustnalso recur as aspects of the air thesenpoems breathe. This is no more accidentalnthan it is “Nature” poetry. It isnrather the rehearsal of the book’s desirento embody our shattered present andnto suggest its source.n”Urlied,” one of the final poems innthe book, removes the guesswork inherentnin Chappell’s undertaking. Itngives a philosophical and scientific basenfor what underlies the poetry. Lucretiusnspeaks roughly three fifths of thenpoem; Chappell bases his speechesnsquarely in De Rerum Natura, echoingnLucretius’ ironic rejection (in anpoem) of poetry and religion as perpetuatorsnof fear and illusion. By makingnLucretius’ statements anachronistic,nChappell wants the social and politicalnupheaval of Lucretius’ time and oursncompared. Rilke and Olympus becomencontemporary, equally detestablenin their romantic divergence fromnthe truth. Lucretius’ particular truth isnthat we are composed of irreducible,nimpervious particles and of the void innwhich they randomly move, things innthe universe being accidental arrangementsnof these two elements. Space isnendless and the movement of particlesnthrough it eternal. Human deathnmeans merely a redistribution of thenparticles. Chappell has Lucretius sayn”The comfort is, there’s nothing personalnin it,” and evaluates Lucretius’npoem as the bravest of acts:nLucretius has walked out far tonview the GorgonnJULY 1988131n