THE VOICE WITHIN THE VOICE

Most mornings in fair weather (often not so fair in spring and summer in Louisiana), Darrell Bourque, Louisiana’s premier poet, can be found writing the lines to a new poem while walking an old path near his home in Church Point, Louisiana. He’s a master of what poets call “voice,” often entering into the voice of some lesser-known figure who has made a significant contribution to the culture and history of his/her native state. 

Bourque’s latest book, From the Other Side, is beautifully illustrated with the art of Bill Gingles, a Shreveport artist, and features poems about Henriette Delille, a former New Orleans religious figure. During the 19th century, Delille organized a group of devout Christian women called the Sisters of the Holy Family to nurse the sick, care for and teach indigent and illiterate Black and Creole children, as well as immigrating adults who settled in the French Quarter of New Orleans. This group was formally recognized in 1942 by St. Augustine Church in the Treme of New Orleans, and Delille, who died in 1862, was first deemed Servant of God in 1988, then advanced to Venerable in the process of canonization by the Roman Catholic Church. Her inclusion in the process continues — the next two steps are beatification and canonization.

Darrell Bourque and his wife, Karen, became interested in this passionate and empathetic nun several years ago — an interest which culminated in Karen designing and rendering a glass triptych for a window of Christ the King Roman Catholic Mission Church in Bellevue near the Bourque’s home in Church Point, Louisiana. The recent publication of Darrell’s book of poetry, From the Other Side: Henriette Delille followed last month’s dedication of this window. 

Although Henriette Delille spoke French (as does Bourque), Bourque captured her voice in what he terms persona sonnets in English within From the Other Side, an impassioned voice that speaks of orphans and the uneducated on the streets of the French Quarter of New Orleans — a voice derived from Bourque’s meditations on the images and colors in Gingles’ paintings; e.g.,:

What If You Dreamed

                    …We teach 

                    reading here the way we teach children to sing. Old

                    women wander from arches to see what this reach

                    

                    will reach. We start with the names of flowers sold

                    on the streets in the Quarter & the Marigny, peach-

                    colored, pink & red & blue-dyed flowers, white gold

                   

                    flowers named how they are named: Daisy, Bream,

                    Belle, Violet, Hyacinth & Myrtle, William, Iris, Reed, 

                    Sorrel & Olive, Lillie & Camellia, Rose, Red & Gleem.

                    We start with who they are & go to what they need.

One of my favorites, All the Time, is accompanied by Gingles’ painting by that name, an acrylic panel including scarlet forms resembling poppies in which Bourque presents Delille’s voice speaking about the work of the Sisters of the Holy Family: 

                       …We moved quietly from one need to another need

                       as we found it. We brought things inside our houses, kept our candles lit,

                       We let the world be the world, let the heart be heart, let creed be creed. 

This is one among many poems in the volume that show Bourque’s ability to achieve what A. E. Housman called “not the thing said but a way of saying it.”

Another poem in which Bourque imagines Delille speaking of her dedication to work with children of the New Orleans streets is the poignant:

The Difference Island 

              …My wings

              are who I am. They flew me to this difference island where I am no more

              a trace or line. We crossed bayous & bays & lakes & rivulets as fine as lace

              to this other world beyond geographies where I knew what I had to live for,

              the poor despised, the cipher bought and sold, what I saw in an orphan’s face.

Bourque used the titles of Gingles’ paintings for all of the poems in this volume and points to the language of the paintings as influencing the language of his poems. “Without these paintings I know I could not have accessed this particular set of poems spoken by the powerful and holy human being Henriette Delille is,” he writes in the acknowledgements to From the Other Side. I would add that Bourque’s deft gift of imagining the voice within the voice (“…What’s just beyond the tree leans on what we never knew we knew…”) influences the reader’s understanding of “the other side”and the art that takes us there. 

The Sisters of the Holy Family continue to carry out Delille’s mission in retirement homes, schools, and other sacred service organizations in New Orleans, Shreveport, Galveston, Little Rock, Washington, DC, in California, in Belize, and in Africa. Delille’s original prayer penned in French was a simple but cogent one: “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love. I want to live and die for God.”

Order from yellowflagpress.com or darrellbourque@gmail.com. 

LOUISIANA’S POET MAGNIFIQUE

If readers can obtain a copy of the latest 64 Parishes magazine, published by The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the article featuring Darrell Bourque, 2019 Humanist of the Year, written by Chris Turner-Neal with photographs by Akasha Rabut, is cause for celebration. I first saw the stunning cover of this magazine during our last lunch two weeks ago with Darrell and Karen before we left Louisiana for our second home in Tennessee. We’d just accompanied the Bourques to Christ the King Church for which Karen had created a glass triptych honoring Henriette Delille and were doing our pre-lunch briefing before enjoying barbecue.  Henriette Delille, a religious "humanist," has been presented for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church in honor of her former work with the indigent in New Orleans, and From the Other Side, Henriette Delille, Darrell's book of poetry about her, is presently in press.

I loved the photograph of the leonine face of this poet who has been telling stories about southwest Louisiana in his passionate and profound voice during the forty years I’ve been his friend and enjoyed his mentoring. A former Louisiana Poet Laureate, Darrell also received the 2014 Louisiana Book Festival Writer Award and the ULL Center for Louisiana Studies James Rivers Award, among other recent awards and honors. At a reading in Grand Coteau I asked his wife Karen if there were any awards left that could be bestowed on him and then answered my own question with “The Humanist of the Year Award.” 

Darrell served as the first Friends of the Humanities Honor Professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, once directed the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program there, and was president of the National Association for Humanities Education. He also served as project director for a reading series in Lafayette featuring Louisiana African-American writers and calls himself a “kind of social activist” in the article written by Chris Turner-Neal — a modest remark about his work honoring the music, history and culture of Acadians, Creoles, and blacks in his native region. 

My history with Darrell can be traced back to an interview with him when I was a feature writer for the Daily Iberian in New Iberia, Louisiana during the 80’s, and he loaned me a copy of the manuscript for Burnt Water Suite, providing me  background for work that became his second book of poetry. I was asked to introduce Darrell at a poetry reading in New Iberia when this book was still in manuscript form, and I knew then that I was listening to an authentic voice, one that mirrored the Cajun culture in a mystical and musical way that hasn’t been duplicated by any of Louisiana’s finest poets. 

He has encouraged and supported the work of many “wannabe” and established poets with warmth and sincerity throughout the forty years I’ve known him. Each time I declare that I won’t write poetry again, he laughs and says he looks forward to reading my latest. Each time I received an unwarranted criticism from a fellow student in a Creative Writing class Darrell taught, he’d chide me for not having confidence in my work and urge me to move on.

This morning I re-read the ten books he has written that I carried with me to Sewanee and finally decided that my re-examinations of his work only impressed me further, and his true, original voice would remain one of those soul-stirring invitations to honor our common humanity. I also know that the recent Humanist Award isn’t the tip of the iceberg —he still has to be named Poet Laureate of the United States. You rock, Darrell Bourque!

ART, KING CAKES, AND CATAWBA TREES…

Glasswork by Karen Bourque commemorating Henriette DeLille

Those of us who have passed the 80-year old mark will remember Sunday afternoon drives through rural countryside as a way to end a week peacefully. At times I’m treated to such a drive across the prairie of southwestern Louisiana near Church Point, Louisiana. Usually the drive follows lunch in the home of Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana poet laureate, and his wife Karen, an outstanding glass artist. Yesterday, we scheduled the drive, not only to ramble through the countryside but to view Karen’s recently-installed glass pieces honoring Henriette DeLille in three windows of Christ the King Roman Catholic Mission in Bellevue, just down the road from the Bourque’s home.

Henriette DeLille (1812-1862), a French-speaking woman of West African descent, was brought up in the French Quarter of New Orleans as a free woman of color who received education in music, literature, and nursing and was also a member of the system of placage in which mixed race women became kept women of wealthy white planters. During the 1830’s, DeLille began to break away from this system of social mores, became a nun, and eventually formed the Sisters of the Holy Family, an order that provided education for the disenfranchised people of color, as well as care for the elderly, and which burgeoned into a worldwide mission for the poor that remains active today. 

Karen’s beautiful stained glass windows (one large centerpiece window and two smaller pieces in windows on each side of the centerpiece) are a tribute to The Venerable Delille, in which Karen created images of the Holy Trinity using vivid blues, greens, and a brilliant red symbolizing DeLille’s heart and Christ’s love. Golden rays above the center image represent God, and the Host and chalice in the center suggest a vision of Christ and his love for creation. Although the stained glass windows proved to be difficult to photograph, Vickie Sullivan captured the imagery well in the light that illuminated the lovely glass pieces Karen had been inspired to create. She says she feels privileged to share this art with others so they can “explore their own spirituality more deeply as they pass through a real world filled with challenge, trial, mystery, and miracle.” 

Darrell and I climbed the steps to the choir loft and looked down at the immaculate interior of this mission church which he says congregants maintain without outside help — cleaning, painting, and repairing when necessary. He has written a book of poetry commemorating Delille that is in press with Yellow Flag Press and will appear this year. I‘ve read the manuscript, and believe that the Delille commemorative book and another forthcoming one that contains his versions of ghazals accompanied by the art of Bill Gingles will be acknowledged as his finest works. 

Darrell was recently named Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and will be honored at a ceremony this spring. We’re always honored to break bread with the Bourques when we sojourn in Louisiana during the winter months and our visits are customarily celebrations. We’ll enjoy another visit because Darrell wrote this morning that he’d eaten a piece of the king cake we'd brought for dessert yesterday, and he bit into the baby (a plastic baby imbedded in the cake, and the person biting into a piece containing it has to serve the next cake during pre-Lenten days).

Catalpa trees photographed by Karen Bourque

On the ride back to the Bourque’s home, Darrell meandered by crawfish ponds that had once been rice fields and showed us his family’s former land, including a line of catawba trees on his grandfather’s property that had survived, several of which Karen photographed for Let the Trees Answer, a book of poetry I wrote last year. I’m sure you Louisiana fishermen know that these trees harbor a plethora of catawba worms, yellow creatures with black lines running down their back that make good fish bait. I’ve caught a gracious plenty of catfish using them, but they’re pretty squishy when you bait your hook!