David Middleton celebrates the artist Jean-François Millet's sympathetic realism depicting the harsh life of French peasants in the nineteenth century and honoring their essential human dignity. Middleton follows Millet, picture by picture, in taking a lowly pastoral theme and elevating it to epic and tragedy. He seeks to describe Gruchy—the small Norman village near Cherbourg where Millet grew up—and explore that rural world in relation to the American South and his own career as a Louisiana poet.
David Middleton is the author of two previous poetry collections, The Burning Fields and Beyond the Chandeleurs. He is a professor of English, Alcee Fortier Distinguished Professor, and Poet-in-Residence at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
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