Pass the Crawfish Étouffée and the Boiled Shrimp!

When I read Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in high school, I had no idea that I was not only reading one of his epic poems; I was also reading a fictionalized account of some of my own ancestry and history. 

Yes, I knew I had some French ancestry on my mother’s side, sitting side by side with some German as well. I didn’t know that the German had arrived relatively late, in the mid-nineteenth century, while the French had been there more than a century earlier. And I didn’t know that most of that French had come from Canada, in the maritime provinces collectively called Acadia. A tiny handful of my mother’s French ancestors had come directly from France.

 

I didn’t know that, at college football games, when I chanted “Hot boudin! Cold coosh coosh! Come on Tigers, poosh, poosh, poosh,” I was using words from my own ancestry. When I read A Cajun Night Before Christmas to my children, I never thought to ask why I could imitate the Cajun accent so well.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Evangeline, a monument to the Acadians, St. Martinsville, La., via Wikipedia.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Elegy for a Tow Truck Driver – poem by James Matthew Wilson at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Tribes – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

“Portrait d’une Femme,” poem by Ezra Pound – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

A Worthy, Doomed Metaphysical Poet – David Deavel at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

“My Shadow,” poem by Robert Louis Stevenson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"New Orleans Poems in Creole and French" by Jules Choppin

When you are born and grow up in a state that has parishes instead of counties, whose legislature was required to write laws in both French and English as late as 1911, whose legal system is based on Napoleonic Code, and where Mardi Gras is an official state holiday, you gradually realize that you come from a very different place. 

Louisiana is an unusual state. North Louisiana, where my father grew up, could pass for East Texas or Mississippi; it’s Bible Belt country. My mother’s family was a combination of German immigrants and Cajuns from south-central and southwest Louisiana. I grew up in New Orleans, where people’s accents could pass for Brooklynese. I had close relatives who spoke German, Cajun French, and English. My mother didn’t go grocery shopping; she “made groceries.” 

 

When you’re a child, however, all of that seems normal. It’s your day-to-day experience. Only when you grow up and move away do you realize how strange it all sounds – and how difficult it can be to explain to people not from Louisiana. 

My childhood and family experiences came back in a rush when a friend handed me a copy of New Orleans Poems in Creole and French by Jules Choppin (1830-1914). 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

The Men Who Were Worthy of Athens – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

Poetry Prompt: Revels & Celebrations at Colony! – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Which words are not – poem by Laurie Klein at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

‘Insomnia, My Sometime Muse’ and ‘Netherworld’ – poems by Norman Solowey at Society of Classical Poets.

 

‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Jack Bedell and "Against the Woods' Dark Trunks"

You grow up in a place like suburban New Orleans, and one of the first things you learn is that the land on which the suburbs float was at one time marsh or swap. My own childhood home had two huge cypress trees in the yard, and they never did quite thrive like they did in marsh-days. The one next to the driveway died first, the cement partially blocking water from reaching its roots. A few years later, the one in the front yard died as well. Even in humidity- and rain-rich New Orleans, it needed more water than allowed by the St. Augustine grass.  

I thought about those cypress trees as I read Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks: Poems by Jack Bedell. Bedell is a professor of English and coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, which sits “across the lakes” from New Orleans, the lakes being Borgne, Pontchartrain, and Maurepas. It’s just up the road from Ponchatoula, which for a very long time laid a legitimate claim to being the strawberry capital of the world. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

“Hurt Road” by Bruce Stewart

It’s 1967. Fifteen-year-old Hank Goodman, his parents killed in an automobile accident, comes to live with his grandparents in Crosscut, Louisiana, not terribly far from Leesville. It’s a small town, he’s from Detroit, and Hank is not impressed. At first. But he meets a girl named Becky Rayburn, he begins to grow fond of his grandparents, and soon finds himself settling in. 

But Hank is the grandson of a Taylor, and the Rayburns don’t talk with the Taylors because of a long-ago tragedy. Becky clearly likes him but tells him she can’t see him. Then an aunt and uncle arrive, and with nothing to keep him in Crosscut, Hank goes with them to live in Denver.

A few years and two tours of duty in Vietnam later, Hank returns to Crosscut. His grandfather has died; Becky was married and had a child but is now a widow. One thing that hasn’t changed was Carl Walker, the son of the man who controls the parish (county). Carl gets into often serious trouble as fast as his dad pulls strings and gets him out of it. And now Carl wants Becky. Hank, however, is standing in his way – and that means trouble.

Bruce Stewart

Hurt Road by Bruce Stewart is the story of Hank Goodman, struggling to get past the death of his best friend in Vietnam, rediscovering his love for a girl whose family wanted no part of him, and trying to find how to create a life. It’s a heartwarming, engaging story about small-town life with its goodness, badness, and everything in between. (It’s especially engaging for some like me whose father came from a similar small town in Louisiana.)

Stewart grew up in Louisiana, and for 28 years he served as a Louisiana State Police trooper, retiring in 2009. He was also deployed to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He is also the author of the novel Sing Me Something Happy (2017).

The tension between Carl and Hank slowly builds and then begins to ratchet upward, making for a tense conclusion. Hurt Road combines suspense, romance, and an appreciation or small-town life into a successful story.

Top photograph: The Vernon Parish, Louisiana, courthouse. Vernon Parish is similar to the fictional Lee Parish inHurt Road.

The Old Hammond Highway

The interstate, elevated through swamp

for 23 miles, parallels its predecessor,

the Old Hammond Highway, finessing

the way between lakes and swamp,

fishing camps and gas flaring. We drive

across the flatness above the water, the sky

overwhelming like an old Dutch landscape.

Then I see the old car, a light blue

’54 Chevrolet, white-topped, speeding

along the old highway below, and the boy,

perhaps five or six, coat and bow tie,

the boy, buzz-topped, peering

from the back-seat window, until he looks up

and sees me. He waves, and keeps waving,

until the Chevrolet disappears behind trees,

I see him only once more, as the car rises above

the road onto the bridge over the channel, then

descending once again into the trees. I still see

the waving hand, the smile, the buzz-topped

blond hair, the window slightly lowered,

allowing the air past and present to cool

the interior.

Photograph by Alex Grichenko via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Poetry at Work: The Work of a Poet Laureate

In 2011 here at Tweetspeak Poetry, I reviewed Why the House is Made of Gingerbread: Poems by Ama Leavell Haymon, a retelling of the story of Hansel and Gretel in poetic form (with a few additional poems as well). We also featured one of her poems that year for National Poetry Month.

Her other collections of poetry include The Strict Economy of Fire (2004), Kitchen Heat (2006), and Eldest Daughter (August 2013). All, including the Gingerbread poems (2010), are published by LSU Press (proving, and I occasionally have to do, that my alma mater is about more than football). On Friday, I received an email from LSU announcing that Haymon had just been named Louisiana’s poet laureate.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Louisiana has a poet laureate? Who knew?” Well, Louisiana does have a poet laureate, and for the next two years it’s Haymon. (She conveniently lives in Baton Rouge, the state capital.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.