COBOURG POEMS, an Introduction

It has been a pleasure to return to Cobourg, renewing long lost friendships and making new acquaintances that may develop into friendship. It’s been over 35 years since I had the leisure to walk the beach at any hour, stroll to the lighthouse. These locations, especially Victoria Park, the beach east & west, were far more important educational institutions than the local highschools.

It was in that free zone where many Cobourgers enjoyed their first kiss, met their sweethearts, had their first drink, or toke, first fuck, first … Yet the park and beach invites older lovers, hand in hand, bare feet, cool waves licking their ankles. Remembering make out pit-stops south of The Breakers.

All of this inspired many of my early poems which were eventually to find their way into my first book of poetry, Walking On The Greenhouse Roof, or in assorted Canadian literary journals. After a 20 year hiatus, I began to write poetry again, and publish. Several of the new poems also found some resonance in the Cobourg of my past & present.

Unexpectedly, my email listserv has continually expanded and continues to do so. This is heartening for a native son of Cobourg. In keeping with the warm reception I have received from many, it occurred to me to assemble several poems/writing of mine that reference to Cobourg directly, or have their context in Cobourg. So please read and enjoy, forward to others you think might enjoy. It's a lengthy read. It gets better as you scroll down. The earliest poems are at top and they display an adolescent mind at work. The scroll will take you to more recent material.

I believe my poetry and writing will engage you. Unlike the dreck and drag, the monstrosity and mediocrity that pollutes the pages of the local media, I have the self-confidence (arrogance if you wish) to make such a bald-faced assertion. Oh, and I present the actual writing into the public domain to support my assertion.

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COBOURG BEACH

The rorschach clouds
drift past the moon
slow as rush hour traffic
on the Gardiner Expressway.
Wind waved poplar leaves
makes twinkling stars
of half-hidden street lights.
The trees hisssss
with the menace of a tangle of snakes
In the distance,
seducing my eyes,
is a lonely
winking harbour light
flirting
with
disaster.

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OLD MAN IN THE PARK

In shy Victoria Park
where the only life left
in decaying October
are dead leaves littering
rusting lawns
and a lone old man
sitting on a despondent bench.

With an old tweed cap
from the Salvation Army
resting like a bad habit
on his wrinkled head
he sits meditating memories
across the horizon
across writhing Lake Ontario.

Watching from the street
I wish like a child
to sit on the lap
of that magnificent old man
with white whiskers
like thinly spread frosting
on his history-worn face
and to listen to the stories
I have heard that old men tell.

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VICTORIA PARK COLLAGE

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

I'm here, sitting on a bench, facing Rochester
wondering where that old man is I saw here last year
the one with ragged pockets containing tales like lint and dust

Serpently the fog stealths up the beach

The cacophony of kids tumbling into each other
bounce off blue-bell waves into trees
like a happy plague of bees

Hey Bobby: Bobby!

Mom! Mom! Billy just...

Mom! Mom!
Look at me mom!
MOM!! LOOK!!

The fog was as harmless as Sandburg made it
I should have remembered

From the waterworks to the coal-coated piers,
like beads on a necklace, lovers stroll the shoreline
murmuring private psalms,
eyes happy as laughter from children on swings

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

Then there are the hippies, stoned, scattered
like autumn leaves on the green-wave hills.

The wind is perched
waiting in the trees
to ambush unaware children

The lighthouse like a messiah draped in a toga of white-washed metal
stands gathering waves around its concrete knees
The gulls are parables surfing the crests of breeze

Along the shore waves curl around splinters of sun
casting them before the feet of passing lovers

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

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PRAYER FOR MY FATHER

When I saw you father
lying in your coffin

still

like tall grass the wind has forsaken
I began to understand stars and distance
I knew your hands noble with leather
would never drop again upon my shoulders
and I understood caverns
memories dripping like stalactites
the echoes continual reminders
I knew your eyes made from playing and labour
would never wet with shared pride
and I understood waves
how suddenly they rise
tumble into noise for no reason
(But we give them reasons anyway)
I knew your voice rough from war and depression
soft with compassion from love and children
would never sound
and I understood

silence

that ears can be useless
deafness a blessing
Each time I looked into the night sky
my eyes adopted the orphans of tiny light
and my thoughts cradled their solitude
I had done this father
but I have learned today that distance
did not dullen their brightness
that I need no reasons
Tomorrow I shall leave them
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . alone

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ELEGY FOR MY MOTHER
Reta May Keeler (01/11/1912 - 01/24/2004)

In your beginning was the blood and the breath,
the sharp inhalation of the carnal chaos of life.
Born 6 lb., 6 oz. in the pubescence of a century
of unprecedented carnage and creativity,
the state marked the occasion with certificate 12‑05‑037696.

In the unelectric world,
devoid of devices of diversion,
you flourished in family
and began your career
pushing placenta and parenthood
onto the open palm of life.

And so you earned
your Bachelor of Mom,
graduating into grandchildren
for the Masters of Mom,
but the world wasn't finished
with your dissertation of lineage
and great grandchildren won you
the Doctorate of Motherhood

My trees are not yet barren
because it is September,
but for you, my mother,
a cold wind swept down
with January ferocity,
liberating your soul
for post‑graduate work with the angels.

Your spirit is a kite tethered with umbilical love
and gentle unto the good days,
memories like random breezes tug
-- what is the wind but a woman
loving us with caressing directions.

Your life straddled two millennia.
Your children born in peacetime
bracketed the world's worst war;
so I enjoyed your memories
of the pre‑tek world,
of the pre‑penicillin world;
from pre‑flight to post‑lunar landings,
your life was grounded
graceful as a backyard garden.

I regularly visited to mine your memories,
plucking nuggets of ageless gossip.

On the weekend of your death
I meant to ask you about your first kiss
but you replied with your last three diminishing breaths,
like the ellipsed ending of a love long life sentence...

Defiant of Death Certificate 422‑372‑045
you will remain an unfinished poem
carried into the interstellar future
on the crest of code of dna,
forever in a state of becoming...

==========================================

THEY LOVE YOU BECAUSE

They love you because
you are Sister of the Sun
You are one their eyes
cannot look upon
though they risk in vain
desperate and quick attempts

They love you because
you are Daughter of the Day
They cannot hold you
though they move within
your invisible embrace
They know when you are with them
because you live
between dawn and dusk

They love you because
you are Angel of the Evening
They love you though they know
they cannot possess you
because your lover is Night
and he awes all mouths mute
because he is bearer of confidence
to the hands of lovers

They love you because
they know you will always return
to open their eyes with benedictions
You are Mistress of the Morning

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FOR THE MASTER, W.S.

I am young
. . . . . . . . . . . right-now-young
that age my blood
does push-­ups
to exhaustion
in female fingers.
I know the lines
you writ
understanding
I need not heed them
for I am those lines;
the bursting boy
collecting kisses
the occasional
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . thorn;
the running male
arms full
of known and secret
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . charms.
Bill, I salute you
and your keen eye
which surface never
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fooled.
Were you here
a breast for you
a celebration of flesh
and all that moves it.

==================================

COMMUNICATING

I sometimes wish
it weren't so hard
to tell someone
that summer is gone,
that I could speak
a million words
in a gesture
the same way that I
tell my mistress
I love her
and that she is beautiful
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
by a caress on the breast
or slap on the ass;
or by sitting silent
on the edge of a garden
the flowers would grow
and bloom. (Not that they
would not have, had I not
been there, but that they did)
How much more socialistic
my life would be
with this added comfort;
content as a cow's udder.

=====================================

I AM MINISTER OF THE FIELDS

I am minister of the fields
singing the hymns of the winds
shivering the ungrazed grass.

I am parishioner of the night
humming prayers in the light
of the nebular stained glass.

I am adorer of the groves
dancing the dance of the gods
down the silent aisles of fruit.

I am choirboy of the woods
mellow-making the old limbs
of an ancient tree like a lute.

I am singer of the soft-sunned
soil and of a dimpled pond
over which a cloud proudly walks.

I am poet of the pastures
plucking wheat in my leisure
writing bibles with their stalks.

===================================

THE POLITICS OF SPRING

The Peoples Republic of Poetry was inspired during a short‑lived love affair with a dipoemat's beautiful daughter.

Delina, may your cheeks be trilliums and sanctioned by the Provincial Government of Poetry. Where you touch me a wound bursts forth like a spring blossom. My body is a filing cabinet of fanatic nerves. My eyes martyr themselves on your cheeks. My hands are the heretics of distance. My arms are the legislation of love. You are the rose I am a thorn on. I am a peasant in the dynasty of your eyes. You are a guest in my wilderness of love. What if I wrote; "You and I, as simple as that, for what is more perfect than that which is truly simple?”

It was a spring affair.

In spring the snow disperses like a mob of resentful rioters. In fields there are wounds in the snow where grass bleeds green, where grass is an awakening eye. In spring the snow goes a. w. o. l. In spring the sun leads a successful guerrilla movement or coup d'etat. In spring there’s an insurrection of grass and love. All winter our flesh was ignorant of the sedition of sunlight. No one ever votes spring into power. Is spring a totalitarian imperialist? Are robins infiltrated foreign agents sabotaging snowmobile trails, encouraging Green Power? Spring is a tolerant state because it permits equal opportunity to all colours. Winter is a one‑colour regime. Perhaps we all love spring because it allows civil rights to the tulips, to the lilacs, to the exuberant blossoms with wide-ons gluttoning sunshine and busy bees lathered in flower-cum. The sun is prosecutor and executioner of snow. The sun casts an unanimous verdict and ignores all appeals. April showers are the mourner's tears after winter has been hung from the gallows of warmth. Summer is the sun's gift of appeasement for the questionable use of coercive force to eliminate snow. (The government recessed to attend a coroner's inquest involving the sunlight‑poisoning of winter) Fall is a word that speaks for itself.

This was the state of the affair that became the affairs of state of mind in the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry.

If a poet wore the premier of something, what might that something be? Would it be a nation of obedient poetry lovers? Would the national militia consist of mighty tulips armed with colour and sunshine? Would the national anthem be a long joyful sigh after love? Would the Union of Pollen Producers go on strike demanding higher rates of sunlight and more elaborate fringe benefits such as lighter showers and heavier dew? Would this cause an imagine national crisis? Would the Creative Intelligence Anarchy report that the Insect Pollen Transportation Organization had been infiltrated by dissident outside agitators such as breezes? Would the Federal Bureau of Inspiration be called in to conduct a thorough inspiration? Would the constitution enshrine the Prime Policy of Poetry Proselytization and Prolifteration? What would be foreign policy? Would we accept only immigrants carrying passport dreams? Then what about the refugees from Grief and defectors from Despair? Would we send out ambassadors to collect the neglected? Would we establish dipoematic relations with Pain, negotiate for a ceasefire and settle for shorter durations? Will we pick and chose our enemies at the drop of a poem and come charging, singing the Battle Hymn of the Poetic?

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LOCAL POET FESSES TO FICTION

It was July, 1960; Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins had just released ‘Summertime’ on the same day the Woolsworth counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the site of a sit-in that sparked the civil rights movement in the USA. The Sixties were on. Meanwhile, on a quiet summer day, the Peterborough Examiner, on their dedicated Lakeshore News page, carried a human interest story about some good ole Cobourg boys.

Way back then, long before men walked on the moon, the concept of re-cycling meant getting back up on your bike after an elbow-bleeding spill. Environmentalism was an undeveloped theology. The motive was money, tax-free income. Everyone understood the rules.

So let’s do some math. The boys earned $8.80. Returning an empty pop bottle netted $0.02 each. That comes to 440 empty bottles. That works out to 110 bottles per boy. That meant 110 bottles per bike -- no indication of a wagon being pulled. Quite a feat with only paper bags. I’ll wager you’re beginning to suspect something.

I know some of you pre-pensioners are thinking to yourselves; well, what about the nickel-worth jumbo bottles? In terms of bulk these bottles would replace two of the regular size. The nickelers were less likely than regular bottles to survive the toss from a moving car. The nickelers fail to undermine the story.

How many bottles would fit in a large grocery bag? 10? 15?. Hmmmm. That would be several bags per bike. Would all those paper bags fit on a bike, even if the bike has a newspaper-sized jumbo front basket? Can’t hang paper bags from the handle bars. So how was this feat accomplished? Are you beginning to smell, as N.A.S.A. puts it, the post-nutritive disposal substance?

The reporter failed to dig deeply, and ran with the story. I was just a kid, more like The Beaver than Eddie Haskel. The story had intrinsic uplift. Four good boys use their energies to clean up drive-by trash to make money. That is a sunshine moment, and the men and women of our good community should be aware of what our lads are doing. Perhaps other boys looking for fast cash, will cover the Baltimore to Cobourg route, or the Grafton to Cobourg route. The power of suggestion and fine example.

The following day, the other three boys were telling me about their parental interrogations, mostly pertaining around the issues of “What did you do with the money?” “Why didn’t you tell us?” “I didn’t know you would do a fool thing as to go to Port Hope and back, all on a dangerous stretch of highway. You coulda got yourself killed.”

Yep, I did a lotta splainin' that day. I did quite well, I thought to myself, for my first fiction performance. So, this is my coming out. 48 years later. I dread telling this now to the local news media; mostly because of the poetential for hammy headlines: LOCAL POET FESSES TO FICTION. I recall the exhilaration when I saw my lies published in rock solid print.

The first and foremost Law of Lies is: Remember Everything! No problem, here is the newspaper clipping attesting to all the details of the incident – exhibit #123. It’s quite the peculiar power that media have, to turn fiction to fact by mere publication. Their worthy credibility fuelled the power of authentification.

And there I was, starting off my uber-career as a media liar at the very time I entered the world as a full-blown hormone under restraining orders set down by the theological totalitarianism of the day. Elvis made a public spectacle of displaying his hormones, so the trickle down theory only served to agitate an already raging storm, and the screaming response of girls was well-noted. How do you tell your parents that it’s like holding back a herd of wild stallions with harness made of dental floss?

So, just to make a turbulent situation worse, I plunge into white water rapids – I meet a girl on my Peterborough Examiner paper delivery route. I was Norman Rockwelled. I was skinny-girled. I had just turned 13; she was a whole year older. She was just as my mother described her -- "a sweet young thing".

She was the first house on my paper route, and every day she opened the door in full bloom, pollen clutter and all. It took an hour to deliver that one newspaper, delivery done when dad called her to dinner, then I went on to late-delivery everyone on my route. I only noticed that I was riding on the softest tires of silk, wondering when it would be okay to ask her over to my place to see my model car collection -- and what girl wouldn‘t want to see that?

A few weeks later I was called to carpet by the newspaper boss. Irate subscribers were complaining about late delivery. It was ‘suggested’ that I do my delivery route in reverse, and make the house of the girl the last visited. I kept to this for a few weeks.

The courtship continued. It’s difficult to be a hero when one is not qualified. So when Monday’s delivery brought me to her doorstep, she asks, “So what did you do on your weekend?” It was easy to answer that toss-away. Fiction. “Oh me and the boys biked to Port Hope and back collecting bottles and made a lot of loot. Want some licorice?”

I could see the story dazzled her. Not only was I brave for going the distance on a dangerous stretch of highway, but demonstrated the get-er-done gumption to bring his sweetheart a bouquet of licorice sticks. Of course girls know that boys lie. And I know this also. I’m a boy. I lie. Girls collaborate with enticements. Girls are the enticing on the cake.

The next day I tell my story at the Peterborough Examiner office. Yep, they responded well to it. The next day, a reporter asks me some questions about the story. I give him details, pulled $8.80 right out of a hat. And with that, fiction became fact, and the next day I brought it to my girl as substantiation of my lie.

I quickly learned that the employment opportunities for liars is quite restricted. Free lance liars seem to have unpleasant visitations once in a while. Men lie to women, but sometimes this has the unfortunate consequence of acquiring a sentence to marriage, followed with perpetual parole conditions.

But under cover of poet, I could lie through my dentures to my heart’s content. One did not need a certificate in advanced bs to be a poet. Besides, I got the goil. I still got her. So lying to the news media had a lifetime effect on me. I saw that there was a future in this for me. Because Bonnie is the fire I always wanted to play with.

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THE FORENSICS OF FUCK (Case 42-2005)

All that remained
of last night’s turbulence
of sensuality in the sand
was the bowl of her buttocks
braced where his knees
dimpled the sand
with impressionist energy

Excerpt from Witness Statement #1:
“…her incence-ual body
curled like smoke around his body.”

They were the treasure
pirates of love left behind.
Beach sand permits no tracks
no trail of arrival or departure;
it’s as if the imagination
merely touched down
for a pirouette of pleasure,
ephemeral as a passing breeze

Excerpt from Witness Statement #2
“At first it sounded like an assault
but I saw the moonlight splatter off their skin
from the thrusts, the thrusts, oh yes, the thrusts
I realized it was an assault on the sensuous.”

At the water’s edge portions of poetry were urined in sand,
(Daughter of the Day, Angel of the Evening)
Complicit waves threw themselves onto the text
an attempted cover-up
washing out verbs and other conjunctive evidence

Excerpt from Witness Statement #1
“This part of the shoreline
is so exclusive the beach
selects the waves that stroke it.”

Hair strands
like italicized exclamation points
reflecting splinters of morning sun
were silked on the nearby chickory,
tangled in grass patches.
hair strewn like a wild dream
of gut rock and Janis Joplin

Excerpt of Witness Statement #3
“They exploded into ecstasy,
vowels vaporizing into skin air.”

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STONED IN COBOURG, AGAIN

2008 I occupied space
on Pizza Palace patio across from
Cobourg District Collegiate Institute, West
where 1966 I occupied space
in my grade 12 history class
chin cupped in hand
like a soft boiled egg
and nothing on the blackboard
worth deflecting my interest
away from the house fly
frantic for escape
out the window,
she sneaked up on me,
the teacher, I mean,
ambushed my pre occupation
“Well, Wally, it seems you’re not with us.
Are you stoned on something?”

“Excuse me ma’m, I’m NOT on drugs;
I’m on poetry.”

So . . .
against the advice of Guidance Counsellors
I failed to graduate
preferring the business
of trafficking in poetry
fool time
permanent.

West Beach Goes Crazy

Click on image to enlarge

'SONNET BY CHANCE' UNVEILED IN COBOURG

Click on image to enlarge

The Peoples Republic of Poetry unveiled a sonnet in Victoria Park, Cobourg, Ontario, yesterday afternoon. The sonnet, designed by poet Wally Keeler, was required to meet the strict zoning regulations of a Shakespearian sonnet configuration. Rhyme Scheme Investigators from the Creative Intelligence Anarchy last month issued a certificate of authenticity affirming that Poet Keeler’s structure meets all of the technical requirements of a sonnet, thereby giving the project the green light.

The sonnet is located along the ‘boardwalk’ delineating parkland from beach sand. It is a choice placement in what many regard as the finest park/beach on the shores of Lake Ontario.

The sonnet has been electronically solar-sensitized to present its face to direct sunlight in the same manner as gluttonous flowers follow the sun with their colourful petal wide-ons. Sunlight absorbed into the black dots generates the energy to rotate the sonnet’s face towards the sun. Little energy is expended to rotate the sonnet, so the surplus is stored and the sonnet feeds from this on overcast days.

Constructed of the finest luminescent faux-ivory, direct sunlight splashes off the sonnet with resplendent radiance regardless of time of day.

“This sonnet was inspired by my first visit to Casino Couplet in Mesopoetamia. I was hot. I had thrown a 7-run roll before Lady Luck turned her back on me. Later that night, the idea for this sonnet came to me by chance,” explained Poet Keeler as he unveiled his sonnet, which has been aptly named, Sonnet By Chance.

“Rhyme scheme investigators have become inured to my application of the sonnet configuration to various objects, rather than words” the poet added.

The rhyme scheme is reflected in the number of black dots per die. Stacked one on top of the other the 14-die conform to the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme, however this sonnet has other attractive features aside from three quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

The ascending numbers as the sonnet is ‘read’ from top to bottom is reflective of the narrative development of a sonnet. The Italian Sonnet which preceded the Shakespearian or English sonnet by several centuries consists of two parts (octave and sestet); the narrative of the octave leads to the volta or ‘turn’ of thought in the sestet.

In the case of Sonnet By Chance, the volta or ‘turn’ resides in the rhyming couplet in which the six dots in the die are turned vertically.

Cleverly, the reverse side of this sonnet reflects the same rhyme scheme in descending order. The left side of the sonnet consists entirely of dice bearing two and three dots and producing a zig-zag effect, whereas the right side consists of four and five and presents a more solid block face.

The first Sonnet By Chance was erected in Heroes Square in Budapest, Hungary in 2006. The documentation of its construction is lovingly maintained in the archives of the Artpool Art Research Centre which also maintains the Homage Sonnet to Marcel Duchamp. Sonnet By Chance was considerably scaled down for the Cobourg erection.

“I’ve always preferred sonnet erections that are strong, sturdy and exceedingly poetent,” said Kathryn McGlynn, a life-long friend of Poet Keeler. “His rhyming couplets are renowned for their rich fecundity.”

“I’ve seen many sonnets in my life, in poetry collections, in specialized anthologies. Poet Keeler is the only one I know to step outside the confines of language to manifest sonnets in 3D, and to apply poetic rhyme schemantras as a principle of design to assorted objects and materials.” said Cobourg poet/photographer Ted Amsden. “It is an extraordinary application of simile – this is like that.”

Poet Keeler has been exploring variations of poetic configurations (haiku, limerick, sonnet) and applying them to assorted objects and data. Some of his sonnets are configured statistics and became part of a series he called Sonnets From The Computerese, a minor take on the title of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets From The Portugese.

A First Look at Happy Town

Port Hope is clearly recognizable in this upcoming ABC network program slated for fall release

STUDENT ART EXHIBITION @ ART GALLERY OF NORTHUMBERLAND

(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

The 16th Annual Student Exhibition (May 15 – June 20) is currently making a fine display of itself at the Art Gallery of Northumberland (AGN) in Victoria Hall. The art is created by students from grades 9 through 12 from schools throughout Northumberland County.

This is seed bed art, by students flexing their imaginations as well as stretching their techniques and media. Exhibitions such as this present a wide variety of art, from the well executed tried and true, to recklessly manifested originality.

Dorette Carter, Curator/Director of the AGN wrote “For many of the participating students this will be their only exhibition in a public art gallery, for others it will be the first of many exhibitions in their careers. We as consumers of their art must acknowledge the skill, vision and interpretation of these emerging artists. Art plays an important role in all of our lives, and it is reassuring to know that there is a generation of young artists that will enter into the public discourse that is the world of art and what it does for society.”

The exhibit contains two works from each grade representing the nine participating schools. This sets up a wide variety of media forms – there is no doubt that there will be something that will enrich the casual onlooker.

The most outstanding piece is that of Kate Hunter, a grade 11 student at CDCI West. The piece was given a place of honour that further set off the brilliance of the piece. Called Pinned, the painting consists of acrylic paint of canvas. Ms Hunter writes, “This girl feels like she will be the next one pinned and examined by people. She is afraid of being a specimen.”

Aside from the well-balanced execution and detail of the painting, Ms Hunter’s creative cleverness extended to placing a small pearl tipped pin into each insect, in the same manner as they are mounted and displayed in a museum. The button in the upper left is sewn to the canvas, and the key, which is not painted, but an actual object, is fastened with a fine strand of wire. The attention to consistent detail is illuminated by the fact that Ms Hunter has painted the shadow of the key directly onto the canvas. It would have been incredibly rich if the people who mounted the painting on the wall, adjusted the lighting to conform to the painted shadow; unfortunately, it displays a double shadow, the painted one and the real one from lighting.

Sara Michelle Ouellet and Myriah Thomson, both grade 11 students of Clarington Central Secondary School, were given a bare bones assignment by their teacher; to construct art from hand-scripted words.

Ms Ouellet produced Dazed and Amazed, using pen and ink. She said this artwork “was inspired by the 60’s mod scene. It has a very modern look to it and has a lot of contrast. It displays emotion as well as a fusion statement.”

Ms Ouellet displays an incredibly detailed piece with a perfect balance of busyness and white space. The work is delicate yet robust, powerful whether viewed several feet back or up-close. The line drawing is created by hand-scripting multiple synonyms of the words ‘dazed’ and ‘amazed’

Myriah Thomson’s piece, Bright Eyes, took off from the same platform to produce an outstandingly striking image. She writes, “Using a micrograph technique the focal point is the little girl’s eyes, as she expressed child-like shock.” Again, this artist has incredible control of proportions. The image, composed of hand-scripted words, displays a talent that high-end book publishers would love to have in their stable.

Lili Vahamaki, a grade 12 student from Port Hope High School, produced a mixed media piece called Crow. The title comes from a small silhouette of a crow, yet the painting consists largely of portraiture, a young woman?man? with sharp-edged hair and softly textured skin. The mixed media comes into play with fabric around the neck of the protagonist. A wooden twig is gingerly placed into the painting – the crow balances on its tip.

Laura Alessandrini, grade 9 from Trinity College School, created paint on paper called ‘Back Lane, Port Hope’ that displays a talent beyond her years. The painting is conventional in many regards, it’s execution displays a talent of perception, a gift for proportion, colour and ambience. It will be interesting to see if her development transcends this early skill and explores more creative explorations of media.

Adam Bachmaier, grade 12, Port Hope High School, went all male with his creation and constructed an 18-wheeler transport truck out of wood, (painted) some metal. The piece is called ‘Fueling Our Country’ and adds a bit of caustic satire by constructing the exhaust fumes out of Canadian cash.

The applied paint does not conceal the woodness of the piece. It is uncertain if this was deliberate, or the piece was done in haste and a second or third application of paint was declined.

Brandon Clark is another grade 12 student from Port Hope High School displaying acrylic on canvas in ‘Cyclist City.’ The streetscape is barren of all vehicular traffic, including bicycles. The image is geometrically standard fare, disappearing in the centre of the image. There is an ambiance of empty heat in this image, however, I have been a cyclist in the downtown of Toronto for almost 40 years, and the absence of ‘grit’ in Clark’s painting diminishes the feel of the piece.

There is always room for creative whimsy in a group art exhibition and Serena Leszczynski, of Clarington Central Secondary School, provides it with ‘Monster Birdhouse’. She says, “This is a piece inspired by Tim Burton [movie director]. I love his work and how he creates works of evil-looking but friendly monsters.”

Emma Potts, a grade 9 student at Cobourg District Collegiate, east, produced a mixed media piece called, ‘Anger Is An Energy’. She says, “Punk isn’t dead – as long as there are frustrated teenagers, there’s punk. You can’t get rid of it that easily.” It would be interesting to know her response to that assertion 20 years hence. This is a playful and insolent production, with t-shirts declaring that they hate Dark Side of the Moon. There is considerable text (in broken portions) which suggest a number of inside jokes that only a select few will be aware of, and the unsuspecting public views as randomness.

Max Rabkin, grade 10 from Trinity College School, displays a collage/drawing called, ‘In The Spirit of Gris’. A very well-balanced and proportioned piece, the collage contains a single page from a phone book, which starts with the name of ‘Mockett' and ends with ‘Mohammad’. I wonder of this was a deliberate choice?

Quinn Keiffer, grade 11, CDCI West, ‘Fortune Favours The Bold’ says, “In my drawing, I incorporated the Scottish coat of arms because that is where I am from and the Bahamas coat of arms because that is where I would like to travel to. The plants and animals I have chosen all have unique physical characteristics. I wanted to emphasize them by using bold colours.”

Melissa McKinnon, grade 12, East Northumberland Secondary School, produced a wonderful ‘Figure Drawing’. She writes, “Capturing movement effectively with the addition of different medias is fun and a passion of mine. The overall finished product captures one’s attention and is quite effective in portraying my emotions as well as the subject’s.”

No wonder Northumberland Today readership is declining

The professional petulance of the editorialistas of Northumberland Today continues;

Last week, Northumberland Today published an 313-word editorial with which I whole-heartedly agreed. Click here to read it: A freak of nature , Point of view , May 13, 2009. The editorial ended with this sentence: "A word of caution to the politicians who so hated the term 'frink' applied to the rink/fountain project: go with 'water feature', it becomes a 'freak'."

I sent a 53-word letter-to-the-editor (below) to offer a better description of the frinkenstein monstrosity. Below is the letter in its entirety that Northumberland Today decided should not grace its mediocre pages. No wonder the readership of Northumberland Today continues to decline.

"The Viewpoint, A Freak of Nature, May 13 asserted that politicians hated the term “frink” to describe the rink/fountain project. The author of The Viewpoint failed to step beyond their mediocrity, thinking of themself as a clever wit by calling it a “freak”. It is more appropoetic to call it a freakenstein monster."

REJECTED BY NORTHUMBERLAND TODAY

Northumberland Today continues to be a dumpster for bloated mediocrity.

I was bored from Grahame Woods’ column, “Those were the days” (May 12) about his early macho motoring days which evolved into a lifetime of guzzling gas and contaminating my breathing space. There wasn’t the slightest remorse for his collaboration in the auto-culture that paved over paradise and put up parking lots, that supported suburbs that swallowed farmland, that financed Middle East dictatorships.

The column displayed continued pride in the I-was-cool-before-anyone-else syndrome. This dime-a-dozey tale is typically 20th century Americaca.

This is my far-more-cool-before-anyone-else tale.

I never possessed a car nor desired such. Back in the day in Cobourg, I watched puffed up cool dudes drive their egos back and forth between the then Dairy Queen at University/William, and the east collegiate, cruisin’ for babes.

So there I was, a young man from the lower working class, with a CCM no-speed bike. Babes? How could I impress babes? Poetry. Great gushing gobs of it.

“I want to translate pain into a prayer; if it is answered, the miracle will be your laughter.”

It brought Dr Alec Lucas, head of English Dept, McGill University, to Cobourg to discuss a book of my poetry. Then Louis Dudek, (one of the Montreal poets of the 60s that included Irving Layton, A.J.M. Smith, et al) jumped in to collaborate.

Dr Lucas wrote; “Gusto and intensity do not of course make art, but when they are combined, as in his poetry, with an unusual gift for creating images the results are striking. There is nothing here of a fear of words.”

Poetry was a babe magnet. It wasn’t the book; it was the lyrics and images that stroked their sensitivities.

“I use question marks as much as I can when I write of love because they are the shape of sleeping women who want to keep secrets.”

I didn’t need to display purchased items to turn heads. I had natural fair trade talent. I could take breath away without spewing carbon monoxide. My office and studio was inside my head. I was verbilicious.

“If a poet were the premier of something, what might that something be? Would it be a nation of obedient poetry lovers? Would the national militia consist of mighty tulips armed with colour and sunshine? Would the national anthem be a long joyful sigh after love? Would the Union of Pollen Producers go on strike demanding higher rates of sunlight and more elaborate fringe benefits such as lighter showers and heavier dew?”

A pretentious convertible as an ego extension wasn’t me. My stanzas went from zero to hero in nano-seconds. Jocks could flex their biceps. My stanza operating procedure was to flex my imagination and waste pulp frictioneers with 45 calibre metaphors and surface-to-sentence similes. Other guys pressed pedal to metal; I pressed pen to paper.

“Put your poem in its upright position. Close your eyes and imagine a nation made entirely of imagination. Units of verse of the unitverse, the poetariet of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, came charging at the drop of a poem, singing the Battle Hymn of the Poetic. En garde."

Pontiacs are mediocrity personified, but Poetry is Poetency! There ain`t a vehicle manufacturer that can beat that.

“She was the fire I always wanted to play with.”

Those were my days, and I still have them in rich abundance.