WHAT WALTER INGLIS ANDERSON INSPIRED

When more gloom than sun surrounds Teche country, rain falling daily and cold following, I am grateful for the art on the walls of my house, especially the prints of Walter Anderson’s work. This Mississippi artist who suffered from mental illness but who did not let this illness stay his hand from drawing and painting was a humble man who had a reverence for nature and knew that painting, drawing, creating block prints, sculptures, poetry — was not about competition: it was about Art. As he wrote, “his object in being was realization — to realize everything from the smallest object in nature to the most casual acquaintance…”

For several years, my friend Dr. Victoria Sullivan and I traveled to Ocean Springs, Mississippi to research books and articles and to explore Anderson’s habitats. We also visited the Walter Anderson Museum of Art so many times, we could have become docents for this wonderful place. We were preparing for an article Vickie would write about the botany in his work, and I to compose a poem — both scheduled to appear in Interdisciplinary Humanities, a publication sponsored by the National Association for Humanities Education. The entire journal was devoted to Walter Anderson, and the editor, Lisa Graley, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, declared that “never before have we worked with a group of authors from such diverse backgrounds who were so enthusiastic about one singular subject…" She also wrote that “through the efforts of Anderson’s mother, he was brought up in an environment where the creation of art was a way — not just of life but of living…”

Vickie’s article, “Plant Life ‘Realizations’ in the Murals of Walter Anderson” covered 12 pages, while my poem, “On First Looking into Anderson’s Refuge,” was spread across two. Vickie studied, in depth, lines and forms which Anderson used to depict flora and fauna —trees; e.g., slash pines, which Anderson had captured in a linoleum block print, Chinese tallows (shaped like a woman’s head and shoulders) in another linoleum block print, and wrote extensive, elegant descriptions about the murals from Walter Anderson’s Shearwater Cottage, describing colors and forms of plants; e.g. pipeworts and Yellow Flowered Pitcher Plants, Wood Lily and pink Morning Glory flowers. She also described Sweet Gum and Red Oak trees, and flowering Dogwoods that Anderson painted in the murals for the Community Center in Ocean Springs (another place we frequented during our explorations). She included Anderson’s own writings about his activities from his journals, especially the Horn Island accounts. 

“I live and have my being in a world of Shape and Color,” the artist wrote about his work accomplished during sojourns on Horn Island where he studied plant and animal life. Vickie expressed her admiration for him in a concluding thought that “his spiritual thoughts had moved from turbulent (referring to his mental condition) to recognition of a mystical element within himself. The mystical sense from which he painted interprets nature’s manifesting light.” 

My own poem published in the Interdisciplinary Humanities contained four verses, the second and fourth of which appear here:

II.

He stopped caring for humans,

they were abstractions, pure forms

to people his myths, fantasy props

drawn in hooks and curves,

an ancient language,

signs and symbols, pictographs,

lines trapping the emergency of moment,

claiming history, organic and watchful;

he did all of this wearing a crumpled felt hat,

managing to tip it in gentlemanly gesture

to unknown women

(for whom he had no desire),

to unknown men

(who offered no campfire camaraderie),

alone in a pure world

whose tragedy was a dead animal,

calamity, a hard storm;

he, the eye of God piercing cloud banks

over an island beckoning shipwrecks,

the hand of God poised over unblemished page,

following shorebirds…”

IV. 

At the cottage, a disheveled figure,

he fell asleep in thickest night,’

left hand on the page of fantasy,

right hand clutching pen

after sketching a fairy tale,

re-designing legends,

he lived there too,

bringing whimsey to vague parchment,

using both hands,

scratching literature into visuals,

words unfolding, then folding outward,

transposed into another art.

These excerpts are only the tip of the iceberg in the story about Walter Anderson but I know that The Interdisciplinary Journal containing essays, poems, memories about him was Lisa’s hope for readers to visit the museum and see Anderson’s stunning murals. I think of those warm, eventful days we spent exploring the world of this brilliant artist, and each time I sit at the breakfast table and look up at a print of his“Walls of Light,” some of the gloom of these winter days dissipates. 

A “CITY OF EXCELLENCE”

Marquis de La Fayette

When I’m out “vagabonding,” I’m sensitive to the energy of a city and am curious about the economy that has helped develop that energy. This past week-end, we visited our good friend, Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, a retired English professor from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who recently moved to LaGrange, Georgia. It was our second visit, and we were again impressed by the energy and diversity in this city of 30,000.

LaGrange is situated in the foothills of the Georgia Piedmont, and in 2000 it gained recognition as “Intelligent Community of the Year” along with larger, bustling cities like Toronto, New York, Singapore, and other large metropoles. It has also been named a Georgia “City of Excellence,” which I think typifies this distinctive city. Once a textile center due to the plethora of King Cotton plantations, it has morphed into an industrial and commercial center housing carpet tile manufacturing and the major assembly plant for the KIA automobile industry.

Taste of Lemon Restaurant

Like other burgeoning cities (e.g., Chattanooga, Tennessee), the investments of wealthy philanthropists have created centers of culture in LaGrange that are largely due to the donations by philanthropic foundations — in the case of LaGrange, the donations of the Callaway family foundation have resulted in outstanding cultural centers: two art galleries, a symphony orchestra, a ballet company, an opera company, a Biblical History Center, and other cultural sites. New Iberians in my home town of New Iberia, Louisiana may be interested to know that LaGrange even has its own Mardi Gras Krewe called the Krewe of Mask, which sponsors a Mardi Gras Parade in February each year.

Mary Ann @ her new house

We missed the International Festival and other activities honoring the Marquis de La Fayette, a Revolutionary War hero who impressed George Washington by crossing the Atlantic and fighting in the War for U.S. Independence. La Fayette left his wife on their country estate near Paris to participate in this war after visiting Georgia in 1825. While visiting, he observed that the topography resembled that of LaGrange, his wife’s estate in France — hence the name of present-day LaGrange, Georgia. We did get a snap of the statue of the Marquis while walking in the beautiful town square. The Marquis penned lines that seemed to have imprinted on its residents and contributed to its recognition as a city of excellence: “The welfare of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she will become the respectable and safe asylum of virtue, integrity, tolerance, equality, and a peaceful liberty.” 

We attended an unusual art show at the LaGrange Art Museum that featured the work of French Symbolist artist Eugène Anatole Carrière. The exhibit contained portraits of Gauguin and the poet Verlaine in monochrome and covered the top floor of the museum. We ascended via an old elevator that the docent asked us to imagine as one that took us to a loft in New York City, but she gripped my arm tightly when she glimpsed my anxiety at boarding the carrier. The artist Carrière is reputed to have influenced Pablo Picasso’s renderings of mother-and-child works, and the exhibit showcases “Kodak Moments” of Carrière's wife, daughter and sons in which the subjects are winding wool, lying down, embracing, praying as depicted through the eyes of a family man.

The Callaway Foundation donated the former Troop County Jail to the LaGrange Art Museum, and when we stood before the Victorian structure, we had difficulty envisioning it as a former prison since the building resembles an old castle. We laughed about the tower being an innovation after the architecture of Brit towers that sequestered those who were to be beheaded. Art Education has become an objective of the Museum, and more than 300 classes of workshops and gallery lectures are conducted in a building called the Center of Creative Learning, a center dedicated to various educational art programs.

Private gardens abound in LaGrange, and Mary Ann keeps pace with gardening enthusiasts in the area; within four months, she has cultivated beds of lantana, Vinca, Ixora, azaleas and other flowering plants skirted by pebbles and growing near a screened porch she had commissioned a carpenter to construct within the few months she has lived in this city. Potted plants line the entry way to her beautiful home near West Point Lake, and we visited two garden centers where she threatened to purchase more flora while we searched for a statue of St. Francis for my herb garden at Sewanee, Tennessee. 

The present mayor of LaGrange has been touting the construction of a walking trail in LaGrange as he feels that the walkway will create greater community connections, but I think that the friendliness and diversity we encountered as we moved about the city indicate that community connections are already well-established in this city committed to excellence.

Photographs by Victoria Sullivan.

THE RAPHAEL PAPERS

Helen and Rose Anne Raphael, wife and daughter of Morris Raphael, New Iberia author and historian (now deceased), deserve signal kudos for spending the last three years since Morris's death sorting and organizing news stories, magazine articles, and the original writings of this chronicler of Acadiana and Louisiana. Helen and Rose Anne recently donated the Raphael papers to the Archives of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and the collection, along with Morris's 14 books, is now on exhibit in the Main Hall of the University library. The exhibit is sponsored by the Dupré Library Special Collections Division and covers the lifetime of a dedicated writer, project engineer, and artist.

During his lifetime, Morris and I teased each other about being members of a mutual admiration society, and every once in a while, he'd invite me into his crowded study to view some of the articles and memorabilia he had collected for over sixty years. He was a tireless researcher and historian and loved writing about Teche country—its people, culture, and history. He wrote fiction and non-fiction books, children's books, newspaper articles, plays, and did the artwork for some of his books, as well as for a unique collection of postcards. I know that organizing the mass of papers in his office was a task of love for Rose Anne and Helen, and valuable history would have been lost had they not been so diligent in making sure Morris's work was housed in a place that would appreciate this collection.

Morris and I shared equal time reviewing each other's books. Morris credited me with spurring him to complete his last book, a commemorative volume about the Civil War in bayou country entitled Civil War Vignettes of Acadiana. He died shortly after its publication during the sesquicentennial commemoration of the War Between the States.  

The exhibit at ULL includes seven glass cases of articles by and about Morris that appeared in the Daily Iberian, The Morning Advocate, Times Picayune, Times of Acadiana, the Franklin Banner Tribune, and other Louisiana periodicals. Copies of his "Bayou Browsing" column in the Daily Iberian are also showcased.

One of the glass cases is devoted to biographical articles and Morris's autobiographical books, My Natchez Years and My Brazilian Years. In this case, a handwritten copy of "Morris's Soup" and a copy of the naturalization certification letter for Khalil Monsour Rafoul, Morris's Lebanese father, are included.

Another showcase touting Morris's passion for the Shadows-on-the-Teche, a National Trust Property in New Iberia, contains articles about the Shadows, as well as the two books that are among my favorites of the books Morris authored: Weeks Hall, Master of the Shadows and The Weeks Hall Tapes. I think that Morris wrote the definitive biography of Weeks Hall, and I hope the National Trust for Historic Preservation will honor him posthumously for this work. 

My favorite fiction book written by Morris, also showcased at the ULL Library, is Mystic Bayou, which relates a story about German U-boats that operated in the Gulf of Mexico during WWII. Three of Morris's book covers are enhanced by paintings rendered by world-famous artist George Rodrigues, a native of New Iberia, Louisiana.

Morris received the Jefferson Davis award from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in recognition of his historical contributions, was inducted into the Iberia Parish Second Wind Hall of Fame, and received the Cajun Culture Award for his work in advancing Cajun culture. He was a member of the Louisiana Writers Guild, the Louisiana Historical Association, and served on the Council of the Shadows-on-the-Teche, to name a few of his civic associations.

On Sunday afternoon, Helen, Rose Anne, Vickie Sullivan (owner of Border Press Books, which published Morris's last book), and I will lift a glass to toast Morris Raphael, Master Chronicler of Teche Country, whose papers and books are now on exhibit at ULL. I only wish he could have seen the exhibit and joined in the congratulatory toast. But maybe he will.

MEGAN'S GUITAR AND OTHER POEMS FROM ACADIE…

If there is such a phenomenon as a post-modern troubadour, poet Darrell Bourque, former poet laureate of Louisiana from Churchpoint, Louisiana, is that man. In his latest work, Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie, his lyrics sing about the Acadie that is, as a friend who attended his reading yesterday said, "his history." A writer unafraid to be called a poet of place, Darrell weaves the culture of south Louisiana, its ancestral and present-day characters,its artists like Acadie's own Elemore Morgan, its rituals and landscape into a tapestry of rich textures.

The introduction to Megan's Guitar is written by Barry Ancelet, Granger and Debaillon Endowed Professor of Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, whose alter ego Jean Arceneaux is a poet, playwright, songwriter and storyteller. Ancelet explains that Megan's Guitar was born in his living room when Darrell viewed a sewn silk art piece depicting a woman playing a guitar by Megan Barra. Darrell often uses the ekphrastic technique in his poetry – viewing art to inspire a poetic response – and was moved by the beautiful silk art piece that provides the cover and title of his latest book of poetry to research his Acadian past and explore in sonnet form, the vision and struggles of his ancestors.

Megan's Guitar is divided into three sections, Acadie Tropicale, poems about postmodern Acadia; Megan's Guitar, a section telling how song is "catalyst and clarifier" of history; and Acadie du nord, the northern Acadian experience.

In the section, Megan's Guitar, Darrell writes in the title poem that "Songs are in fingers as they are/in heart and brain and belly and feet…" and his sonnet reflects those songs in his own fingers, heart, brain, belly, and feet, moving felicitously like a medieval troubadour "inside this trembling world of ours." Although the section is short, it resounds with the chords of Darrell's personal history as a descendant of the migrating Acadians who survived the Grand Derangement. However, in "Vanitas," he writes about an experience common to all of us: "We are always slinking, always wedded/to everything before and after us, even as every rage/inside us is without consent quelled and put to bed."

I had read "Before the Sparrows Awakened" in the section entitled Acadie Tropicale, but it is a poem that resonates again and again with me and illuminates one of the cultural rituals that took place in Darrell's childhood: "Before daylight we were awakened by the voices/of my aunts in my mother's kitchen./As soon as my father and my uncles left for work,/they appeared like gauzy apparitions/and shadowed our backdoor. The sky outside was but a dimly lighted sheet/and the sparrows were still drowsing lazily/in the upper branches of the trees./These birds were rhymes for who we were/in our beds; still, but being awakened/slowly by the voices and the perfume creeping/into the woodwork as water plumped/the dark, rich grounds in the little blue pot/stirring inside another pot on the stove./The anxious thoughts these women carried inside,/they put out on the table/along with whatever was left from yesterday:/sweet dough pie or fig cakes,/gateau sirop or des Oreilles de cochon./On this fare they would break fast/and whatever gleamed in their lives or in lives/close by, they lighted the room with./This hour was something they had taken as theirs,/and it was their job to start the day."  The imagery in this poem is energetic and picturesque and illustrates how Darrell often pays tribute to his generous and self-effacing kinspeople in his songs about Acadie without making declarative statements about those two familial qualities.

Many of the poems in Acadie du Nord feature Joseph Broussard, dit Beausoleil, who was the leader of the first group of Acadians to arrive in New Orleans in 1765. He also led resistance fighters against the British in Nova Scotia from their deportation to his departure for Santo Domingue. He arrived in the Attakapas area of south Louisiana in 1765 and was among three designated leaders of the Acadians. Notes about the poems featuring Beausoleil are included in the concluding section of Megan's Guitar and represent the intensive research that Darrell did before writing his wonderful sonnets.

The lonely figure of Evangeline appears in Darrell's sonnet entitled "Evangeline Speaks," and he captures the poignancy of lost love in lines about her faithfulness to a man whom she "may or may not have held dear …but I was never what they were, never a mother,/never even married…never with the women who foraged for medicinal teas/to save a spouse in a wild land no one knew, or nursed a child, never smothered/by want or dread….I was always covered by right image and right sound, measured neatly in what others wanted to believe."

Darrell, a personal friend who remains my mentor in poetry, has written a masterpiece in Megan's Guitar, and I was sorry I wasn't at his reading yesterday at ULL when he sang his songs to take those of us who have Acadian lineage back to our origins – and to transport those who were not of Acadian ancestry into further exploration and appreciation of a rich and magnificent history and culture. He has accomplished in each illuminating sonnet the two components which Robert Frost once touted as indicative of good poetry: wisdom and delight.

P.S. The stunning photograph of Darrell by John Slaughter in the end pages is a portrait that captures Darrell's strength of character and poetic sensibilities. In the photograph he looks like a French imperator! Bravo, Darrell – the victory is yours!