Review of Burnside Soleil’s Berceuse Parish by Francois Bereaud

The epigraph of this remarkable collection (whose title I’ve shortened for obvious reason) reads: “Enterrez-moi là où mon père est enterré.” (Bury me there where my father is buried) which we are told is a line from an Acadian ballad. It’s also the perfect description of what’s to follow in which we dive deeply into the culture, traditions, and people of the Berceuse Parish, descendants of the Acadian people who came to Louisiana and became known as Cajuns. The collection is at once a play, an oral history, a meditation of fatherhood, a rambunctious set of characters, and a group of poems. This reviewer’s inability to adequately describe the work only speaks to its sparkling originality and depth.

The collection alternates between bits of local history, as told to us by Augustus “Gus” Babineaux, our “curatorial narrator” and “the cast” which consists of the poet and his friends and family. Gus begins his account, always, “A Few Particulars on …,” by telling us, “Berceuse Parish is located between a bayou and a river, Brasseaux and Waxtuygi, and like most settlements in the South is vexed by a history that has little to salvage …” Maggie, the poet’s sister gives us these words of remembrance:

With a cut milk jug, 

you scoop minnows from the bayou. 

Glinting, like dimes. 

Your white shrimp boots 

limpid by the screen door. 

It is the languid swell 

of the shallows against your ankles.

Here, and throughout the narrative, Burnside’s language soars with the beauty of the large and the small. He drops us into the bayou, into the culture, and into the intimacies of the people there. 

One relationship we dive into, in the form of letters written in a mix of French and English is that of the poet’s parents, Uless, a good-for-nothing husband (vaut-rien in French), and Penny, his abandoned wife. Uless writes passionate letters from his wanderings.

If Voisin calls or comes by 

ask him if his padna still sells les écrevisses 

cheap cheap. I will be back.

 I ain’t going see her.

Je te promets. 

Ton vaut-rien, 

Uless 

Penny’s response is clear.

Mon père has promised 

to shoot you, at least les genoux, 

if you come by and make tracas. 

I hope you get smashed

 by a big ass diesel truck. 

Love,

Penny 

Gus ruminates, sometimes in footnotes, on the effect of the relationship on the poet, and lets us know that the history is unclear on the reunification of the couple.

The history of parish, its natural features, and its people is a beautiful mess in the words of the poet which evoke strong emotions throughout the collection. Of the poet himself, Gus tells us: “Our poet lived here—settled and unsettled, split, divorced, ate, drank, spat, longed, and persisted, and wandered but never really left, never could leave this town.”

Any reader fortunate enough to grab this collection will not soon leave this town nor possibly conclude that there is little to salvage in it. Rather, Burnside’s words have set it aglow, the light beckoning one to revisit often.

To order a copy:

https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781680034547/berceuse-parish