An Extraordinary Gift
"If in the beginning there was the word, for Darrell Bourque the word is a beginning, his tool for shaping, defining, and consecrating the ordinary fragments of life and living into a sacred text of elevated worth," Dr. Michael Sartisky, president of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, says of Louisiana's Poet Laureate and his latest book, In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
An Extraordinary Gift
"If in the beginning there was the word, for Darrell Bourque the word is a beginning, his tool for shaping, defining, and consecrating the ordinary fragments of life and living into a sacred text of elevated worth," Dr. Michael Sartisky, president of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, says of Louisiana's Poet Laureate and his latest book, In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems. Bourque, professor emeritus of English and Interdisciplinary Humanities at UL Lafayette, has compiled his poems of the last 40 years into In Ordinary Light, his fifth book. "[Bourque's] poems are afternoons we can wear, a grammar of poetics where images dance to his music, where other poets visit and inspire like angels," says Dillard University author and folklorist, Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy. Stuff your loved one's stocking with this exceptionally affecting collection, published in soft cover by UL Press, www.ulpress.org, $20. Bourque will host a book signing and reading at 3 p.m. Dec. 18 at Barnes & Noble. - Leslie Turk
Bring the Heat
South Louisianans know better than to dream of a white Christmas. The perfect solace is the ability to eat ice cream year-round without having our sanity questioned, and New Orleans Ice Cream Company offers 12 flavors to remind us why it's great to live in the South. Not only because flavors like Cherries Jubilee, Bananas Foster and White Chocolate Bread Pudding have delicious hints of brandy, rum and bourbon with an incredibly smooth and creamy body, but also because the company boasts natural, fresh, local ingredients. The address is on Bourbon Street, so draw your own conclusions on where the liquor comes from. Joey's has all 12 flavors at $4.45 a pint. - Hope Rurik
Good Gris Gris
Job got you down? Holiday pounds piling on? Insomnia keeping you up at night? There's a spell for that, and Magic's in the Bag can guide you. Co-written by Lafayette freelancer Cheré Dastugue Coen and California writer and spiritual consultant Jude Bradley, Magic's in the Bag is a how-to guide to making - and enchanting - gris gris bags and sachets. Coen brings a familiarity with the spell-making of her native New Orleans to this guide, which offers step-by-step instructions on the bags and lists the ingredients - the herbs, crystals, stones and shells - for more than 75 simple spells. It matters not whether you believe in the power of gris gris; making these bags is a fun, creative exercise, and it keeps us connected to one of the more fanciful aspects of Louisiana culture. Magic's in the Bag is available for about $13 at Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and other on-line retailers. Coen will sign copies of the book from 1-3 p.m. Dec. 11 and 18 at Barnes & Noble in Lafayette. - Walter Pierce