- April is National Poetry Month
- Join the Vorhoff Library as we celebrate a woman poet each day during the month!
- New Orleans Poetry
- Posted April 3, 2009
Ever wanted to learn more about the literary heritage of the city you go to school in? The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans, by Susan Larson, is part literary history, part reading list, and part tour guide. Learn all about the writers who have lived in New Orleans, including female poets Maxine Cassin (a Newcomb graduate), Nicole Cooley (also a Newcomb grad), Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Ellen Gilchrist, and Brenda Marie Osbey. A long list of recommended books of New Orleans poetry is also included.
One of these recommended books of poetry is French Quarter Poems by Lee Meitzen Grue (1934- ). Grue was born in Plaquemine, and has lived in New Orleans
since she was 14. She graduated from the University of New
Orleans and received her masters degree in creative writing from
Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She was married to Capt. Reginald Grue,
a river port pilot, and has three children. Published in 1979, French Quarter Poems gives a complex portrait of one woman's life in New Orleans. Many of the poems are illustrated with lush late-70's line art, overlaid with colored tissue paper. The illustration below goes with the poem of the day. To see the illustration without the tissue paper, come to the library and check out the book for yourself!
Another recommended book available from this library is Resurrection, by Nicole Cooley, who was featured on April 2.
Poem of the Day:
New Orleans Winter
It is the end of summer.
In this south swamp morass,
sweet with a lushness of vegetation
and slow warm decay,
all sense of the season
drains weakly on the moist soil.
If winter had come
we could rise again
vigorous and intellectual.
Our flowers bloom fiercely,
house flies abound,
as if on ice
our feet crackle murder
on the starched bodies of roaches
that run the ground.
Our wine is drunk beyond the summer night,
hungover into steamy winter.
No cleanness,
no crispness,
no icicle to startle the mouth,
no snow to wash the fevered faces,
the heat goes on,
but we call the months by their cold names.
