The long, gray moss that softly swings In solemn grandeur from the trees, Like mournful funeral draperies,-- A brown-winged bird that never sings. A shallow, stagnant, inland sea, Where rank swamp grasses wave, and where A deadliness lurks in the air,-- A sere leaf falling silently. The death-like
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states
Louisiana
In 1942, Louisiana established a state poet laureate position, which is currently held by Jack Bedell, who was appointed to a two-year term in 2017. Bedell is the author of several poetry collections, including Bone Hollow, True: New and Selected Poems (Texas Review Press, 2013).
recent & featured listings
type |
name | state |
|---|---|---|
| Festival | Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival | Louisiana |
| Reading Series | RELIC: Readings in Literature and Culture | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | McNeese State University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Louisiana State University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Tulane University | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | University of Louisiana at Lafayette | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | University of New Orleans | Louisiana |
| Writing Program | Xavier University of Louisiana | Louisiana |
| Conference | New Orleans Bookfair | Louisiana |
| Conference | Words & Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans | Louisiana |
Louisiana poet laureate
Ava Leavell Haymon
Ava Leavell Haymon is the author of Eldest Daughter (Louisiana State University Press, 2013).
poems
poem
1900
poem
1994
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids poem
2011
Eenee Menee Mainee Mo!
—Rudyard Kipling, "A Counting-Out Song,"
in Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides, 1923
The woman with cheerleading legs has been left for dead. She hot paces a roof, four days, three nights, her leaping fingers, helium
