Creole poets have always eluded easy definition, infusing European poetic forms with Louisiana themes and Native American and African influences to produce an impressive variety of highly accomplished verses. This work contains poems by more than thirty different poets, presented in their original French alongside English translations. Edited by renowned translator Norman R. Shapiro.

Norman R. Shapiro is Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation at Wesleyan University. His many published volumes span the centuries, medieval to modern, and the genres: poetry, theater, and novels. He has won many of the major translation awards and is an Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des lettres de la Republique Francaise and a member of the Academy of American Poets

M. Lynn Weiss is an associate professor of American studies at the College of William and Mary and the author of Gertrude Stein and Richard Wright: The Poetics and Politics of Modernism