ABOUT ORIGINS AND LANGUAGE…

Eternal flame at Acadian Memorial, St. Martinville, LA

After Easter Vigil on Sunday, we met for lunch with the Sisters at St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, and I sat across from a woman who had once enjoyed the joie de vivre of Cajun country. The conversation about the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and her adventures in gastronomy made me a bit homesick for New Iberia, my other home.

This winter when I sojourned in Acadiana for my half-year stay, I engaged in a whirlwind of lunches, dinners, poetry readings, and visits with old friends. I also investigated more fully my own roots in Acadiana through research and tours of places like the Acadian Memorial in St. Martinville, Louisiana where I found my Vincent ancestor’s name on the Wall of Names. The Vincents were among the first families to follow Beau Soleil, Joseph Broussard, during the Grand Derangement from Nova Scotia to Cajun country. Although these exiled people endured many hardships, I discovered that the colonial population, beginning in 1699 when Iberville and Bienville explored and formed the colony of Louisiana, had also struggled to settle the Louisiana colony, enduring fights over land and other resources with Indians, surviving floods and hurricanes, and striving to establish profitable agriculture.

Later, under Spanish rule, the Spanish expanded the Louisiana population with citizens from Quebec, Switzerland, the Caribbean, Alsace-Lorraine, Normandy, etc. These people became known as Creoles. In the late 1700’s Acadian refugees were sent to bayou country and intermingled with Creoles and Native Americans, African and Caribbean slaves, British, Germans and Italians. Two of my New Iberia friends are descendants of Lebanese and Syrian families who were members of early migrations to Louisiana and who added to the wonderful cultural mix of this unique part of the world.

During one of those migrations in the late 19^th century, my great-grandfather, Samuel Marquart, who was of German descent, joined the German population in Lake Arthur, Louisiana, and my grandfather, E. L. Marquart, married an Acadian woman, Leila Vincent, a descendant of the Vincents who came down from Port Royal, Nova Scotia.

My father, Harold Marquart, learned to speak Parisian French, but he wasn’t allowed to speak the Cajun French my grandmother knew because she had been brought up under the Louisiana laws that were passed to mandate “English only” public schools – laws that resulted in a weakening of the culture in south Louisiana. According to Christophe Landry, author of “Francophone Louisiana, More Than Cajun,” (Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Summer 2010), “between 1920-1960, usage of French or Creole was forbidden in virtually all aspects of life in south Louisiana…often students violating the language restriction were required to write ‘I will not speak French on the school grounds’ one hundred times!” Today, through the efforts of CODOFIl (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) and other state organizations launched to preserve an endangered language, Cajun French is alive and well.

My friend Darrell Bourque, former Poet Laureate of Louisiana, speaks and writes in Cajun French, and on several occasions I have read alongside him at poetry readings. On both occasions, he read verses of poems in which he had used French. Following one of those occasions I lamented about my French deficiencies in a poem that I included in my book, Alchemy, which I include below:

TO DARRELL:

It is good to read poems with you,

the ultimate poet leading the ultimate life;

I like that our ancestors have common roots

that were entwined in boats

rocking on the wave of exile,

their coming disturbing a halcyon world,

wilderness and deliverance in one place.

By right of poetry

we became friends in a friendlier world.

I am looking at your face,

one that has known lost battles

and lately won even more;

it is a face more French than the French,

the sharp incline of your nose

framed by gray curls,

reading words that sound to me

like “pwis and jer, may jahmay,

der swashay, dit swa, dit swa.”

Your wife looks up at you

crooning those soft inflections,

mating with your eyes again;

knowing she does not have to remember

the romance of first years,

every day it is reflected

in your voice and eyes.

I am sorry that part of my ancestry

cannot match yours,

the speaking of an ancient language

aroused my Scots mother’s disdain,

eclipsed my father’s perorations

  in Parisian French,

  in Cajun French,

doubling the language he never passed to me,

or I would be able to parley with you,

tell you in like patois

your poetry is elegant and delivers us,

immerses me in occasions of shared ancestry

where we recite anthems,

chants of the Grand Derangement,

come upon this place

of tangled vines and brown water, singing

it is good to be a poet with you,

it is good to be a poet with you,

it is good to be a poet

  in this new world.

I have tried to redeem my Cajun background (which my grandmother Vincent actually tried to “disappear”) by writing middle-grade and young adult novels based in New Iberia and other communities in south Louisiana: Martin’s Quest, Martin Finds His Totem, Kajun Kween, Flood on the Rio Teche, and a forthcoming middle-grade/young adult novel, Martin and the Last Tribe. The last title should be published by the end of April. Meanwhile, on my next stay in Louisiana, I hope to learn how to “parlez vous” so the “tatailles” (monster cockroaches) won’t get me because my Grandmother Vincent denied her roots!

WINTRY THOUGHTS…

Monday's snow, Sewanee

While azaleas bloom profusely in New Iberia, Louisiana (my other home), snow falls on The Mountain here in Sewanee, Tennessee. The weather man predicted that the snow would cease by 8:45 this morning, but small flakes are still falling at 11 a.m. Outside, the world is still, very still, and the only sounds that filter in are those of the engines of students’ cars on the road behind our home. It’s a morning that calls for staying in pajamas and making good cooking smells or reading and writing, reminding me of my winter in Maine back in the 50’s, a time when I learned to cultivate quiet pursuits…or die of loneliness. I wrote a novel called The Maine Event about that winter, and the eBook and paperback editions are still selling. The memory makes me think I should write a mystery about Sewanee, which I often call “Grayburg” because it has an overarching gray atmosphere that would be a good setting for a mystery.

However, inside our warm cottage, I cultivate laziness and read poetry instead. Ted Kooser “speaks to my condition” with his Winter Morning Walks, a book he wrote while recovering from surgery and radiation for cancer during the late 90’s. Kooser had been told by his radiation oncologist to stay out of the sun for a year because of skin sensitivity so he walked before dawn on wintry days in Nebraska, sometimes with his wife, but most of the time alone.

Kooser says he had been feeling miserably sorry for himself, had given up reading and writing, but when his health improved during the winter, he surprised himself by writing poetry – poems that he pasted on postcards and sent to his good friend, Jim Harrison. After he had completed these cards, he sent them to his publisher and Winter Morning Walks appeared. Of all the U.S. poet laureates, I admire Ted Kooser the most. As Jonathan Holden says about him, his work is characterized “by a kind of tender wisdom communicated with absolute precision.” (Holden is also a powerful poet and was a visiting poet to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Louisiana one summer. At a party given by John Gildersma, he persuaded me to crash a reception given by the University of Louisiana, Lafayette English Department with him, and that was my claim to fame as a friend of an important Midwestern poet).

Kooser’s poetry sent me back to the computer to work on poems for a new book I plan to write this year while we’re on The Mountain. The results of my writing morning:

HOLY WEEK ON THE MOUNTAIN

Snow falls in a world made still,

worshipful sparrows cling

to fingers of dead trees,

chanting anthems of Tennabrae.

A brown rabbit crosses the road,

veering from side to side,

washing his own feet in fallen flakes,

foraging in stubbled grass

for his God–food

now frozen over,

a plenitude lost.

He follows a trail of blood in the snow,

twitches his long ears to hear the last words

spoken on a road rarely traveled,

while crows flap their wings,

shadows on the white fields

hawking Good Friday in a silver sky,

announcing the winter of an untrusting world.

BLOGGING AND “THE BERRY”…

Shadows on the Teche, New Iberia

Often, when I’m meditating on a subject for a blog, I think about E.B. White, the master essayist, who probably would’ve been kicked out of the blogosphere today because his essays in the New Yorker, Ford Times, New York Times, Harper’s, and other journals would’ve been too lengthy for the average post-modern writer and reader. In the post-modern world, any writer can be as good as any other writer, no matter how scantily thought out or hastily researched his work… everything seems to be considered equal in all fields of artistic endeavor... talent is relative... "anyone can do it,” etc.

However, I don’t subscribe to the idea that all creations are equal and believe that poets, writers, and artists need to put in 10,000 hours of practice at their craft–according to one evaluator, it takes at least that much time for a person to become successful at an endeavor. My mentor in the poetry realm, Louisiana poet Darrell Bourque, immediately comes to mind. Then there’s Paul Schexnayder, a prolific New Iberia artist who has gained national recognition for his whimsical art. (Paul illustrated my young adult book, Kajun Kween.) Today, only a few people achieve excellence in the fields of literature and art, although all the tweeting, blogging, face-booking, e-booking activity, and online poetry/art corners would seem to indicate otherwise. That’s why I frequently say I’m still practicing, and I don’t have too many years left in which to practice.

E.B. White, the ultimate essayist, admitted that some people feel it’s presumptuous of a writer to assume that his little excursions or his small observations will interest the reader, and he says there’s some justice in their complaints. He confessed that he’d always been aware that he was by nature self-absorbed…and, in his writing, had given too much attention to his own life, rather than to the lives of others. He writes, “But when I am discouraged or downcast, I need only fling open the door of my closet, and there, hidden behind everything else, hangs the mantle of Michel de Montaigne, smelling slightly of camphor…” He refers to another master essayist, Montaigne, who certainly put in his 10,000 hours, and whose excellent essays mock the idea that everyone who takes up the pen or writes a blog is a natural–born writer and needs no revision after his/her scribbling hits the page.

These thoughts came to me this morning as I considered writing a blog about New Iberia, Louisiana, (aka “The Berry”) the town in which I have a home part of the year, the Queen City of the Bayou Teche where I lived for over forty years before deciding to spend part of the year on The Mountain in Sewanee, Tennessee. The thoughts were inspired by an article about CNN recognizing New Iberia as a city among small towns in the U.S. that have made a “comeback” in recent years. However, when I look back at a 12-page article I once wrote about “The Berry,” I realize that I can't do justice to New Iberia in a sketchy blog just to satisfy post-modern readers who read on the run and who had just as soon have a 300-500-word vignette to affix to the refrigerator with a colorful magnet.

From Kajun Kween

In the original article about New Iberia that I wrote for Acadiana Profile magazine during the late 70’s, I described New Iberia in this manner: “History, romance and art are almost organic to New Iberia. Something in the nature of the city–abounding with live oaks, cypress, banana clumps, bamboo thickets, rice and sugar cane and heavy with the influence of its Spanish, French and Acadian settlers–has inspired many an artist and poet to deal with the lush landscape which entranced Spanish colonists who migrated to the Teche country. These Spaniards gave their trading post the name “Nueva Iberia,” in honor of the “land of flowers, a phrase describing their native Iberian peninsula of Malaga, Spain.”

The article also highlights the oil industries that have contributed to the town’s growth… the Port of Iberia, which opened new avenues of industry in the mid twentieth century and that originated as a drainage channel running about seven miles south to the Intracoastal Canal… the Acadiana Regional Airport… and the cultural renaissance that began in 1972 with commercial ramifications in “Operation Impact,” a downtown revitalization project that centered on Bouligny Plaza and resulted in widespread remodeling of downtown buildings, providing a new face for New Iberia.

From Kajun Kween

These snippets about New Iberia are only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps they’re not even short enough to be called a post-modern blog. I’ve written four novels set in New Iberia, worked as a feature writer for the Daily Iberian and associate editor of Acadiana Lifestyle, and when I return to New Iberia each year, I still find much to write about the rich culture, history, and economic wealth of this fascinating town of 35,000 people who are a mix of Spanish, French, Creole, German, Black, and Scots descent. Each time I return to New Iberia after a half-year sojourn on The Mountain and take my first walk down historic Main Street, I’m greeted by townspeople whose hospitality and joie de vivre are unparalleled in Acadiana. If I stop to eat at one of the restaurants along the way, I’m confident I’ll find cuisine that is c’est magnifique at any place I enter and put my feet under the table! I’d be bold enough to say the cuisine surpasses the food I once sampled in Paris, France.

Blog, essay, post-modern sketch, whatever…I just wanted to salute this town that deserves its crown as Queen City of the Teche. Not every place can make the boast that if tourists once taste Bayou Teche water, they’re irresistibly drawn back to the little town that sits on its banks... and eventually settle there. Brava Nueva Iberia!

Photograph of The Shadows on the Teche National Historic Trust Property by Victoria I. Sullivan; drawings of the Greater Iberia Gumbo Cook-Off and the New Iberia Hot Pepper Eating Contest by Paul Schexnayder.