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Migrare
Beloved Louisiana poet and emeritus Louisiana Poet Laureate Darrel Bourque returns to UL Press with migrare, a masterful exploration of the ancient Arabic ghazal form of poetry, keyed to the abstract expressionistic paintings of Louisiana artist Bill Gingles. Using this hypnotic form and Gingles's paintings as a canvas and foundation, Bourque conjures a vivid, imagistic meditation on pressing issues of migration, difference, and acceptance in the modern world.
68 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 6, 2022
In this set of ghazals I do not attempt to adhere strictly to any of the prescriptives of the ancient forms or the dominant practices in more contemporary variations...The practice of ekphrasis dates back as far back as Homer in Western Literature....This set of ghazals attempts to extend the practice. The poems are not retelling or re-contextualizing or creating a narrative from the images in the visual work. These poems build around the tensions, composition, line, color, and the theater created in abstract expressionistic artworks by one particular artist--Bill Gingles, of Shreveport, Louisiana. The poems are keyed to the paintings rather than extrapolated from them...The Spanish migrare ("I will move") and the related Latin and Italian migrare ("to move into") are the armatures these poems build themselves around.
from "Foreward
Got that, Prospective Poetry Reader? These poems are ghazals--but not traditional ghazals. These poems are ekphrastic--but not ekphrastic as traditionally understood. They are thematically "keyed" to the abstract paintings of Bill of Shreveport and revolve around the general concept of "migrare" or "moving." I admit the foreward worried me. If anything, it has the authority of a writer without the slightest concern in publication: "I'm going to write how I want about what I want and I'm going to include my good buddy's color pictures of abstract expressionism on the facing pages. You figure out if I honestly "key" the poem to the painting--but I really don't care." It's not a "foreward" so much as a "forewarning."
I don't know what to make of the result. I would like to see Bill Gingles' work in person; I really don't think the printing--despite being in color on slick paper--captures the work. Then Bourque chooses Gingles' titles to repeat in his ghazal, sometimes to remarkable effect, sometimes just to bewilder readers. Since the ghazal is not strictly narrative, Bourque employs a staccato-effect of versification which induces whiplash in a sensitive reader:
from "My Foreign Window
They burned our houses and fields in Acadie, burned us out of Myanmar. We are Rohingya
wherever we are, we are Cadien. Every window now in this new land is my foreign window.
Throughout this house is uncertainty and untimely death and unbaptized souls in limbo.
The theater is made for you. You will enter through that dark arch I call my foreign window.
At Grand Pre Le Grande Derangement began in a church. After Lamumba we see Pauline Opango
walking bare-breasted in Leopoldville. She baptizes this grief. She names it My Foreign Window.
Enter the scene where you can. Even the faint flowers are standing before you all akimbo.
They too are passageways and entrances I made just for you, each one my foreign window
leading you away from what you call home, each leading you to the unaccompanied cello
you are or will become if you cross the threshold where I am waiting in my foreign window.
In the back, Bourque provides brief commentary on the specific incidents referenced here--but, in the end, the couplets are still bewildering. The abstract expressionistic painting on the facing page--"My Foreign Window"--is very much abstract expressionism and without any real help. Is the poem "keyed" to it? What the hell does that even mean?
I was disappointed with Darrell Bourque's Migrare. It's self-indulgent, the work of someone requested to produce something for publication. This has potential, certainly. It's just not fully realized.
from "The Same Story"
The story of the movement into another world. The Latins had a word for it, migrare.
How you began your journey in a canal no one thought could hold you, the same story.
The ladder dreamed about for ages, one with angels going and coming, Jacob's story.
Jacob wrestles angel, Jacob limps, Jacob leaves home, his and yours, the same story.
In hot climates all over the world people sleep on roofs, pueblo under the stars story.
A pueblo under the stars story is a people or town story. It is to some the same story.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
The Scholar's Daughter: Poems<---- ----->Rhythm and Booze
from "Foreward
Got that, Prospective Poetry Reader? These poems are ghazals--but not traditional ghazals. These poems are ekphrastic--but not ekphrastic as traditionally understood. They are thematically "keyed" to the abstract paintings of Bill of Shreveport and revolve around the general concept of "migrare" or "moving." I admit the foreward worried me. If anything, it has the authority of a writer without the slightest concern in publication: "I'm going to write how I want about what I want and I'm going to include my good buddy's color pictures of abstract expressionism on the facing pages. You figure out if I honestly "key" the poem to the painting--but I really don't care." It's not a "foreward" so much as a "forewarning."
I don't know what to make of the result. I would like to see Bill Gingles' work in person; I really don't think the printing--despite being in color on slick paper--captures the work. Then Bourque chooses Gingles' titles to repeat in his ghazal, sometimes to remarkable effect, sometimes just to bewilder readers. Since the ghazal is not strictly narrative, Bourque employs a staccato-effect of versification which induces whiplash in a sensitive reader:
from "My Foreign Window
They burned our houses and fields in Acadie, burned us out of Myanmar. We are Rohingya
wherever we are, we are Cadien. Every window now in this new land is my foreign window.
Throughout this house is uncertainty and untimely death and unbaptized souls in limbo.
The theater is made for you. You will enter through that dark arch I call my foreign window.
At Grand Pre Le Grande Derangement began in a church. After Lamumba we see Pauline Opango
walking bare-breasted in Leopoldville. She baptizes this grief. She names it My Foreign Window.
Enter the scene where you can. Even the faint flowers are standing before you all akimbo.
They too are passageways and entrances I made just for you, each one my foreign window
leading you away from what you call home, each leading you to the unaccompanied cello
you are or will become if you cross the threshold where I am waiting in my foreign window.
In the back, Bourque provides brief commentary on the specific incidents referenced here--but, in the end, the couplets are still bewildering. The abstract expressionistic painting on the facing page--"My Foreign Window"--is very much abstract expressionism and without any real help. Is the poem "keyed" to it? What the hell does that even mean?
I was disappointed with Darrell Bourque's Migrare. It's self-indulgent, the work of someone requested to produce something for publication. This has potential, certainly. It's just not fully realized.
from "The Same Story"
The story of the movement into another world. The Latins had a word for it, migrare.
How you began your journey in a canal no one thought could hold you, the same story.
The ladder dreamed about for ages, one with angels going and coming, Jacob's story.
Jacob wrestles angel, Jacob limps, Jacob leaves home, his and yours, the same story.
In hot climates all over the world people sleep on roofs, pueblo under the stars story.
A pueblo under the stars story is a people or town story. It is to some the same story.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
The Scholar's Daughter: Poems<---- ----->Rhythm and Booze
Displaying 1 of 1 review