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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 14, 2021
But he comes
to the tin filled with food
for cats. And I walk to the back door
at night, switch on the outside light
to see if he is there. He comes
mostly in the dark or in the daytime
when he senses we are in the house
busy with dusting or washing dishes,
or when I am at a place deep
in my own darkness, digging,
sifting for a light of my own, shaping words
as I would shape bread, portioning pieces
of grain, earth, iron, air, fire, water
into tins and placing them in ovens.
The clicks of his paws on the brick
are the clicks in the machine I sit before,
the clicks in the metal as the oven heats
and cools.
"Feeding the Opossum"
This is a great collection of poetry. Bourque has a great love of the rugged, natural beauty of his world alongside the marais bouleur, capturing its images as well as its essence in fine-tuned metaphors and similes. Plants and animals come to life; characters are intuitively understood without the need for excessive exposition. In the process of describing and reflecting, we wrestle with him on matters of character and religion, of our place in our world. Many of these poems possess visions of something beyond, something which filters or penetrates our natural world but is visible only in certain light or reflections.
Today I listen to music without words,
the kind the sky in the marais makes.
Father, I am making a song
of first sounds to hold us until
the language of words works again.
Father, I, too, am leaning into waves
of sound and light. Whatever they will give,
I am placing on tongues and ears
like holy bread or burning coal.
"The Consecration of Ears and Tongues
I do have an issue--a petty one, but an issue nonetheless--with the "Cajun" touches: At times they come across as ornament: squeezebox metaphors and similes abound, some publisher put a footnote for the terms zydeco and pacque--and neither term is indispensable within the poems. The publisher's insistence this is "Chapbook 1" in the "Cajun Writers" series is a clue, I believe, why Cajun allusions are dialed up to eleven when they don't need to be.
The author's biography is a real hoot, describing the people residing in the rural areas of St. Landry parish like hillbillies running amuck with shotguns, dangerous badasses calling themselves "marais bouleur," a name, the biography assures us, "they gave themselves, these French-speaking prairie cajuns who felt their lands were being invaded by les americans, newcomers who threatened the cajun way of life, a threat most sharply perceived in the newcomers' attraction to cajun women." What? Then the author returns to Darrell Bourque: "Proud to be a marais bouleur, Darrell Bourque teaches at the University of Southwestern Louisiana where he has directed the freshman English and creative writing programs." Somehow, sorry, but one gives up their marais bouleur credentials the moment one decides to teach English at the local university. I sat in Dr. Bourque's modernity course in 1987--we read D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Ellen Gilchrist's Victory Over Japan. He's a great man with a great sense of humor. I doubt he mistrusts les americans or particpates in terrorism to scare them away from the local women. Shit like this needs to just stop--his poetry is universal enough without someone trying to make him into a cajun caricature for the benefit of...who exactly?
I will leave you with a short poem on the argiope aurantia, the ubiquitous yellow spiders weaving their webs. Bourque uses the specific epithet for many plants and animals in this collection; he's very precise in ensuring we do not confuse what specific plant or animal he is alluding to. The poem proceeds to a wonderful simile based on the natural behavior of the spider.
Garden Spiders and Summer Rains
Spanning poles and trees, power lines and summers,
the argiope aurantia return to do their work.
They insure for another year my part in the tale
about the man who grows spiders at his house;
keep the mosquito hordes in check; always ready
when thunderheads come across the southwest prairie
to hang head-down in the rain, the six front legs
loose, the two back ones clipped on their webs--
swinging like heavy jewels from gypsies' ears.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
No Brother, This Storm: Poems <--------> Remembering August in New Orleans: Poems
to the tin filled with food
for cats. And I walk to the back door
at night, switch on the outside light
to see if he is there. He comes
mostly in the dark or in the daytime
when he senses we are in the house
busy with dusting or washing dishes,
or when I am at a place deep
in my own darkness, digging,
sifting for a light of my own, shaping words
as I would shape bread, portioning pieces
of grain, earth, iron, air, fire, water
into tins and placing them in ovens.
The clicks of his paws on the brick
are the clicks in the machine I sit before,
the clicks in the metal as the oven heats
and cools.
"Feeding the Opossum"
This is a great collection of poetry. Bourque has a great love of the rugged, natural beauty of his world alongside the marais bouleur, capturing its images as well as its essence in fine-tuned metaphors and similes. Plants and animals come to life; characters are intuitively understood without the need for excessive exposition. In the process of describing and reflecting, we wrestle with him on matters of character and religion, of our place in our world. Many of these poems possess visions of something beyond, something which filters or penetrates our natural world but is visible only in certain light or reflections.
Today I listen to music without words,
the kind the sky in the marais makes.
Father, I am making a song
of first sounds to hold us until
the language of words works again.
Father, I, too, am leaning into waves
of sound and light. Whatever they will give,
I am placing on tongues and ears
like holy bread or burning coal.
"The Consecration of Ears and Tongues
I do have an issue--a petty one, but an issue nonetheless--with the "Cajun" touches: At times they come across as ornament: squeezebox metaphors and similes abound, some publisher put a footnote for the terms zydeco and pacque--and neither term is indispensable within the poems. The publisher's insistence this is "Chapbook 1" in the "Cajun Writers" series is a clue, I believe, why Cajun allusions are dialed up to eleven when they don't need to be.
The author's biography is a real hoot, describing the people residing in the rural areas of St. Landry parish like hillbillies running amuck with shotguns, dangerous badasses calling themselves "marais bouleur," a name, the biography assures us, "they gave themselves, these French-speaking prairie cajuns who felt their lands were being invaded by les americans, newcomers who threatened the cajun way of life, a threat most sharply perceived in the newcomers' attraction to cajun women." What? Then the author returns to Darrell Bourque: "Proud to be a marais bouleur, Darrell Bourque teaches at the University of Southwestern Louisiana where he has directed the freshman English and creative writing programs." Somehow, sorry, but one gives up their marais bouleur credentials the moment one decides to teach English at the local university. I sat in Dr. Bourque's modernity course in 1987--we read D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Ellen Gilchrist's Victory Over Japan. He's a great man with a great sense of humor. I doubt he mistrusts les americans or particpates in terrorism to scare them away from the local women. Shit like this needs to just stop--his poetry is universal enough without someone trying to make him into a cajun caricature for the benefit of...who exactly?
I will leave you with a short poem on the argiope aurantia, the ubiquitous yellow spiders weaving their webs. Bourque uses the specific epithet for many plants and animals in this collection; he's very precise in ensuring we do not confuse what specific plant or animal he is alluding to. The poem proceeds to a wonderful simile based on the natural behavior of the spider.
Garden Spiders and Summer Rains
Spanning poles and trees, power lines and summers,
the argiope aurantia return to do their work.
They insure for another year my part in the tale
about the man who grows spiders at his house;
keep the mosquito hordes in check; always ready
when thunderheads come across the southwest prairie
to hang head-down in the rain, the six front legs
loose, the two back ones clipped on their webs--
swinging like heavy jewels from gypsies' ears.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
No Brother, This Storm: Poems <--------> Remembering August in New Orleans: Poems
September 15, 2024
Picked this up on a whim at a library book sale. So incredibly glad I found it. Very moving and very beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews