Until We Talk - Softcover

Bourque, Darrell

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798985882414

Publisher: Etruscan Press, 2023

Synopsis

This collection is a set of jazz-inflected ghazals tied to epigraphs from Colum McCann’s award-winning novel Apeirogon and illuminated with Bill Gingles’ abstract expressionist paintings.

Until We Talk is of race, ethnicity, human rights, social justice, hate crime, terror, supremacy, colonialism/post-colonialism/neo-colonialism, the Other. Predominately rooted in the tragic losses in contemporary Israeli and Palestinian families, the poems braid those losses into parallel losses in geo-political race, ethnic, class, and caste conflicts.

About this title

About the Author

Darrell Bourque is professor emeritus of English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he also directed the interdisciplinary humanities studies program. He served as a Louisiana Poet Laureate and was recipient of the Louisiana Book Festival’s Writer Award and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Humanist of the Year Award. His publications include Burnt Water Suite, The Blue Boat, In Ordinary Light-New and Selected Poems, Megan’s Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie, and Migraré.

Bill Gingles is an artist and former art educator. His paintings are represented by galleries in the U.S., British Columbia, and London. He works and lives in Louisiana with his wife Diana and their three Jack Russell terriers: Bridget, Farley, and Penny.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

 THE COMPANY OF HORSES ---Why did you leave the horse alone? ---To keep the house company, my son. ~MAHMOUD DARWISH Left alone they will follow tree lines or fence lines, or any courses keeping them from whatever’s on the other side. I live by horses in the nearby fields. I run past them every day on my morning run. My wife takes pictures of her favorite ones and talks to the horses knowing they know something we’re not sure they know. Not verbs or nouns, or syntax, but something of the timbre horses know of company, something of the tone of company. I hear them when other horses pass by in trailers off to some place the horses in these pastures will not travel to. I do not know the language of whinny but I do not doubt that there is something in horses pitch being said about need and love and kinship and wanting company. Cows, goats, crows, geese, lambs living with horses, and chickens, pigeons and doves and bees know more than we think they do. Chagall knew lambs. Picasso knew horses. Look at the village dreams of the one and terror of bombings in the other. In all the places you live in, look for the horses.

Edition details

• Publisher: Etruscan Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798985882414
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138