Saturday, September 29, 2018

Blank Canvas





She can be seen outside the doors
gathering a thicket of flowers.
She’s a watercolor painting,
her gleaming white cotton dress
like fine linen paper in the sun
bleeding red, yellow and purple.
She returns to the dining room
and places flowers in a vase
next to a porcelain teacup
and a solitary goldfish
lazing in a crystal fishbowl.
She stops to take in the photo
hanging on the large empty wall
of a sculpture of St. Michael
guarding the tomb of her lover.
She slowly removes her straw hat,
placing it on an empty chair,
and sits down to a small platter of
browned bread, cured meat and yellow cheese.
Lace curtains billow in the breeze
as she cries like a homeless child.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Cane Field



as she stands at the river’s edge,
motionless, like a blue heron,
her rippled reflection bobbing
atop the black green water.
I stir and catch her attention.
She wades waist-deep to be near me
and cleanses the soot from my face.

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Swamp and Circumstance




Swamp and Circumstance

I find her on the bayou,
Her beauty capturing the light.
She calls to me affectionately
And I instantly feel better.
I am surrounded by water,
Egrets are all around us.
Isn’t she beautiful?
I never really understood her.
Years ago, I became burnt out.
I could not live in her swamp and circumstance.
I left for 18 years and came back.
I’ve appreciated her beauty ever since
Those who love her...
It is a constant devotion.









By Donald G. Redman

Monday, January 9, 2017

The Year of Love


THE YEAR OF LOVE
by Donald G. Redman

It was supposed to be the Year of Love.
The year was but a newborn baby
When we reached out for each other’s hands,
Entwined our fingers and prayed for love.
The Year of Love lasted just eight days.
Then the recriminations began
And anger fell like an avalanche,
Burying us in frosty silence.
My only comfort a threadbare quilt
Of loneliness and isolation.
This year was supposed to be different.
Alone in my icy, little room
Carved from a glacier of solitude,
 I imagine writing love sonnets,
But my Muse has abandoned me for
A sunnier, warmer environ.
Crumpled love letters like balled little fists
Litter the floor near the trash basket.
I think I will try again – later.
In the meanwhile, I await the thaw
And cross out days in the Year of Love.

Copyright 2017 Donald G. Redman

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Nothing Gained



Nothing Gained
by Donald G. Redman

My resistance to you
is time wasted.
I sometimes struggle
to realize the obvious.
Tethered to the reality of the
photograph before me,
I let it happen.





Nothing Gained is a poem repurposed from a newspaper article of the same title, written by Sarah Bonnette. The article originally appeared September 21, 2016 in the Slidell-Picayune.

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Three Haiku

I.
My jagged edges -
A broken heart, shattered dreams -
Cut deep nonetheless.

II.
Unkept promises
like withered leaves in autumn
carried by the wind.

III.
Encased behind walls
Of marble cold to the touch
Inside beats a heart.



Copyright 2016 Donald G. Redman. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Ernest Gaines: A Timeless Storyteller

Ernest J. Gaines
(Photo by Joseph Sanford, courtesy Ernest J. Gaines Center.)


By Cheylon Woods

In 1933 a child came into this world with so much potential to learn from, be influenced by, and influence the world around him. As the world was slipping in to political and economic devastation, no one knew that a small boy born on River Lake Plantation in Oscar, Louisiana would become Ernest J. Gaines, One of the most prolific and timeless authors of the 20th century.

Growing up on a plantation gave Ernest J. Gaines a unique type of perspective on life. Gifted with the talent of honest observation, as a child Gaines was able to perceive the crux of complicated social issues such as race, gender and class. He was also able to see how people influenced their world around them and how, in return, they were influenced by the world.

As he embarked on his career he used all of the things her learned from River Lake Plantation, adolescence, and San Francisco State University to create honest depictions of how he saw life in the South. Mr. Gaines used the information he gleamed from observing personal interactions throughout his life to create characters that wholly embodied the essence of being alive. Characters like Miss Jane Pittman (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman), Catherine (Catherine Carmier), Louis (Of Love and Dust), and James and Jefferson (A Lesson Before Dying) all embody a realness that draws you deeper into your own awareness about self and the world you live in.

It is this realness that makes the work of Ernest J. Gaines so timeless and pointed. All of his books paint a complex picture of real life filled with love, sadness, hardship, betrayal, mistreatment, and hope that resonates beyond the Civil Rights Era. His novels and short stories strike at the heart of real issues such as racism, oppression of all kinds, miscarriage of justice, gender inequality,  while showing us that through it all people can still love, learn, be strong, progress, and care about one another and their places that shaped them.

The topics that can be found in Gaines’ writing are not only as old as humanity, but have been driving forces in shaping civilization, both good and bad, as we know it. To this day some are looking for ways to ensure equality for all while others may be looking to secure their personal power. We still look for love and acceptance while there are those who look  to live a life strictly by their own whims, unconcerned with who or what gets hurt in that process. 

Throughout his work, and throughout his career, Gaines strove to show the world a mirror of itself through a Southern lens. He crafted people from different upbringings, with different interests and peculiarities, and showed us both the good and the bad in all. Readers can find some vestige of themselves in all of his characters, and are reminded that they possess as many complexities as those on the page. His work forces us to think about our own perceptions reality and righteousness and how these ideas actually work in our own communities.    

Common themes throughout Gaines’ work are the ideas of justice and accountability. In almost every novel there is some measure of justice and accountability, although often subtle.  A Lesson Before Dying is one of his more powerful novels that directly puts these issues in the forefront for the reader. This book not only looks at the idea of justice and the justice system, but it also calls the idea of masculinity, advocacy, reality, and community responsibility to the forefront of our minds. All of the characters are confronted with their ideas of right and wrong through the incarceration of one man, and throughout the book you see how each character comes to some kind of terms with the idea of justice as it relates to the society that they live in.

Gaines expertly crafted the story and characters of this book in a way that conveyed the true weight such an incident would have on a small community and community leaders today. In 2016 most people who read A Lesson Before Dying can remember at least one time during their lifetime where something similar happened, and their community (physical community or intellectual community) discussed the ideas of justice and personal accountability.

Ernest J. Gaines has created some of the most moving and accessible pieces of literature of the 20th century. He wrote during a time of social awakening which is reflected throughout his work. He strove to show the humanity in all and all of humanity, and succeeded doing so in such a way that is never dated. His characters are not locked in some era from so long ago, distanced from us by a great cultural chasm of days long gone, but are real, breathing and visible to us today. The plots and the characters created by Gaines so beautifully reflect the complexities that is life and humanity that they still resonate with readers more than fifty years since his career began. This in itself is the mark of a great author, and this is the mark of great literature.



 Cheylon Woods is the director of the Ernest J. Gaines Center at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she is also the Center’s archivist and ULL assistant professor of Library Science. She received an MLIS from LSU and an MA in Heritage Resources from Northwestern State University.










Editor's note: Cheylon Woods' essay originally appeared in "Prologue," an audience guide for Slidell Little Theatre and is reproduced here with permission.