A Country Where You Once Lived

We're delighted to hear that the essay Sheryl St. Germain wrote at La Muse last year has received an unprecedented number of positive letters to the editor at The Sun.

The title of the essay is A Country Where You Once Lived and you can read it here.

Sheryl's most recent book is Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems, and her collection of lyric essays Navigating Disaster will be published by Louisiana Literature Press soon.

Sheryl comes from New Orleans but lives in Pittsburgh where she directs the mfa program in creative writing at Chatham University.

Sheryl St. Germain

Here's the video of Sheryl St. Germain reading (sorry about the bad audio) an hilarious poem, "A French Mosquito Defends Itself," from the new collection of poems she was working on in July while here at La Muse. It flips over after a few seconds... :



Here are the blood-thirsty lines:

A French Mosquito Defends Itself

Eet is not easy always to speak with your race,
you of zee mountainous body, you who do not
always pay attention to such small sings as us.
But you should, mon ami, you should.  We have lived
millions and millions of years, we have been found
preserved in zee amber from a time unthinkably
before yours.  And you will not find a way
to exterminate us anytime soon with your stupeed
fog blowing trucks and chemicals with zee Latin
names that hurt you more zan zey do us. 

You speak of us as biting, attacking you. 
Zeese are all zee wrong words, mon ami.  Eet is only
the female of our species, such as myself, who drink
your blood.  Like your vampire we must have a blood
meal every now and zen, but only to make zee eggs,
zee blood is necessary for zee protein of zee eggs, oui?

So we do not bite, first of all, we search out zee ones of you
zat smell best—we search for zee most intoxicating aroma,
we land, we enter, we sip, we drink, we swill
but we do not bite, mon ami.
                      Sink of us, if you will,
as connoisseurs, and your body, a terroir.  We
are searching for zee right vintage, zee good structure
zee good nose, zee long finish, good color, a warm
taste, zee good texture in zee proboscis. Très elegant,
zee slight prickle going down, ooh la la, I must sit down.

So you should feel honored when I choose you above
others, it means your blood is like wine to me, with
zee beautiful aroma and bouquet and moi, I like
zee blood with a hint of berry and darkness,
zee blood with a taste of La France in it from the past,
and how shall I say, a little bit fat, the way we like
things preserved in zis country (zee confit du canard,
for example, you fat ones have zee good taste like
zee confit du human). 

Your body ees like a vineyard with rows and rows of
grapes, your body ees  zee raw material for our eggs,
so non, we do not attack, monsieurs et madames,
we harvest, we feed, we take what we need to
survive, only a tiny bit, not any more.    It eez true
that we spread zee word when you taste good,
that eez why, mon ami, you have 55 bites,
as you call them, 55 leetle mountains of objection

from your body, your slow body, I might add,
whose defenses do nothing to us, but
torture you after we are long gone.  Where,
I ask, eez zee logic in zis torture?  What
young and inexperienced god has formed you?
We mosquitoes would not have survived
one hundred years with such a system.

Maybe you can sink of me, too, as a bit
like Jean D’Arc, My proboscis eez my sword,
I rally the troops, I get us all on the same body,
but not to attack, only to take what eez rightfully ours,
zis blood our bodies have been built to harvest
for our children. 
      Aren’t we a leetle like you Americans,
you want to take zee oil, zee minerals,
zee ideas etc. from zee ozer countries,

and if sometimes you carry by mistake
some hitchhiker, some parasite, somezing,
from your culture, say, that infects or kills,
it’s not your fault, like us, you were born for zis.

July Bookswap

A new retreat started a few days ago, which means a new slew of books from new residents were donated today.

After we had crepes and homemade dandelion, apricot and fig jams (as well as Kerry's homemade cherry compote!) the writer Sheryl St. Germain donated some of her own books first, talking about the artists who designed the cool covers: Let It Be a Dark Roux (by artist Francis Pavy), The Journals of Scheherazade, and Swamp Songs (by Jacqueline Bishop).

Because she hails from New Orleans Sheryl also brought along Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza, a book "about the world, not just New Orleans," as well as a recent collection of 108 sacred poems, Mala of the Heart, and Sherman Alexi's Face, a writer Sheryl said "writes with a lot of anger and interesting gusto." Sheryl also generously gave the library two books by Paul Guest, One More Theory About Happiness and Notes for My Body Double.

The artist Daphne Leighton talked next, about Israel, a book of photos by Annie Sacerdoti, Meir Shalev's novel The Blue Mountain, and a Sotheby catalogue featuring Israeli art going back to the beginning of the last century.

Daphne also donated two catalogues of her most recent art Images of Thought and unknown familiar land (that's one of her paintings to the left).

Camille Goodison then donated her grandmother's memoir From Harvey River, a book about where she's from, as well as a collection of stories, Creole Folktales, by a writer that inspires her a lot, Patrick Chamoiseau.

Deborah Clarke, an artist from South Africa, who lives in Grenoble and who was here last year too, donated Africa House by Christina Lamb about the Englishman Stewart Gore-Browne because it is "about a house as well as a man" who built it from scratch and helped people in the process even if "the dream turned sour."

On a different note Deborah donated Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun a book she loves because it emphasizes "a new life in a different country" but also because she "includes recipes" that give you a real feel for the place and the people.

Next up was the Australian Mary Delahunty who is here working on her memoir Public Life, Private Grief. Mary donated Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood because it is "another way of looking at the Troubles" starting in reportage that bleeds into "a beautiful story of a walk along the border." Mary's other book was Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man about her homeland as "an unreconciled country, but also a book about why justice can never be served."

Kathleen Smith, a filmmaker and producer, is also "drawn to the Troubles" as Mary put it, and so gave the library her friend Darren O'Donnell's Social Acupuncture, a book about confronting change, no matter where we are.

Then Kathleen donated "a book about where I grew up, but more because of the universal truths in it," Alice Munro's Dance of The Happy Shades. 

The jewelry designer Toni Freitas came next donating The Vintner's Luck, (she compared it to Marquez's magic realism) a novel by Elizabeth Knox about a guy who meets an angel.

Toni also brought along 1000 Years of Annoying the French, a funny repackaging of history from the same man who wrote A Year in the Merde.

And finally came the writer and designer David Trujillo-Farley's cool children's book This Is Edinburgh by M. Sasek, about the city he and Toni live in.

David's second donation was Ilustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, which "talks about structure, characterization and many other things" that David says are "a lot more useful than many of the pretty books on the subject."

Again, THANK YOU to everyone for the books!