In this, her first book, Martha Serpas succeeds brilliantly in fulfilling the calculations of the alchemists, those great hermetic artists of medieval Europe. Côte Blanche deliberately and beautifully weds the secular to the divine in poems which, steeped in the Cajun landscape of Serpas’s Louisiana, prickle with exhilarating sensuality. Through its votive offerings to a God who is all too aware of the longings and aspirations of humankind, Côte Blanche becomes a testament to a new, personal belief that is simple yet breathtaking in its reach.

MARTHA SERPAS is a native of Galliano, Louisiana, and a graduate of Louisiana State University, New York University, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Houston. Her poems are included in Uncommonplace: An Anthology of Louisiana Poets (LSU Press). A frequent lecturer on poetry and belief, she teaches at the University of Tampa.