Creole Echoes

Creole poets have always eluded easy definition, infusing European poetic forms with Louisiana themes and Native American and African influences to produce a variety of highly accomplished verses. Creole Echoes contains more than a hundred of these poems by more than thirty different poets, presented in their original French alongside English translations by Norman R. Shapiro. The poems gathered here were all composed by Louisiana residents of European, African, and Caribbean origin. Their themes range from love and history to nightmare and childhood recollection. In these pages somber elegies meet whimsical surprises, and rhyming animal fables meet political panegyrics. --From publisher's description.