Berceuse Parish Volume 13

Burnside Soleil grew up in a houseboat on the bayou, but these days is a pilgrim in New Orleans. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere.

In his first book, Burnside Soleil inhabits a myth that is almost real, of family, of friends, living and departed, and of the Acadian culture in Louisiana. Soleil's brilliant, close-grained and perfectly worded lyrical portraits are enlarged by the historical and cultural context of a second curatorial narrator, Gus Babineaux. Soleil's transcendent accomplishment is to break the heart and restore it to laughter with redemptive irony. Look elsewhere for promise. Berceuse Parish is all there now, and it is a masterwork." —Rodney Jones, author of Alabama and Elegy for the Southern Drawl"Berceuse Parish is an instant classic. Funny, tender, profound, and absolutely goddamn brilliant—here are poems to study and love, lines that will charm you and leave a resounding ache. Burnside Soleil has created a piece of literature that has everything I love about a great book of poems, plus many things I love about a great novel. I can't think of the last time I encountered a poetry collection that felt, on the whole, this originally conceived and winsomely rendered. I want to thrust this gift of a book into the hands of everyone I know." —Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat