NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
JESSE P FERGUSON: NEAR COOPER MARSH
Friday Circle
Dept. of English
University of Ottawa
Ottawa ON
K1N 6N5
Canada
ISBN 1 896362 41 9
$3

JESSE P FERGUSON: COMMUTE POEMS
Thistle Bloom Books
780 Montgomery St., Apt.210
Fredericton
NB
E3B 2Y1
Canada
$4

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JESSE P FERGUSON: NEAR COOPER MARSH

Fifteen short to medium length poems are included in this 20-page booklet by Ferguson,a graduate student at the University, many pre-published in magazines in Canada and elsewhere.

Some of the poems relate to the wild life of the Marsh, as GOLDFINCHES NEAR COOPER MARSH:

	dozens of saffron  
		skybound bubbles

	bursting above
		a sunflower field
         
		swerving
	effervescent 
		flight paths

	carbonating
		a champagne sky
The imagery is interesting and novel, but I do not think that the staggered lines do much for the poem, excepting 'swerving' to aid the effect of a change of direction.

THE CREEK BEHIND MY HOUSE starts bravely with

	black rubber boots
		succumb to brown water
	deep down in primeval muck
		in wet sponge mud
although I was not too enthusiastic with the simile
	clay holds on
		to your boots
	and as you squirm free
		smacks its chops
	like a smiling boy
		hungry for hotdogs
THE GAME shows that Ferguson is not without sensitivity in man versus animal sport:
	the hulking mother roaring
	with less and less ferocity
	the cub whimpering
	for hours by
	her cooling snout
which is reinforced in SNARED:
	twitching this death
	by a bright copper wire

	silenced and plush
	to the trapper's hand
While I think that occasional inappropriate similes and imagery, together with some needless wildness in line staggering are present within the collection, some poems such as SNARED are excellently done.

reviewer: Eric Ratcliffe.
JESSE P FERGUSON: COMMUTE POEMS

Jesse P Ferguson is a poet and musician based in Ottawa, Canada; the handmade COMMUTE POEMS is his third chapbook. The twelve poems here mostly concern themselves with the relationships between humans, nature, art and the built environment. In FALLOUT AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY for example, the small songbirds that crash against the glass of the art gallery and:

	make a soft applause of negligible impact
	with their downy bodies on the concrete steps below.
LIGHTFAST looks at the relationship between nature and art from a different angle, as it contemplates the pigment Chlorophyll Green #31, which the sun affects:
	fracturing the bonds of greenness
	playing havoc in the spectrum
	a painter's nightmare
drawing attention to the human tendency to seek to control nature.

In EMILY CARR, Ferguson commemorates the life of the Canadian artist and writer (1871-1945) who

	......saw what western tribes saw:
	everything sees and so she put more watchers
	in her paintings than can be counted up and down
	her carved beams and cabin faces
These days how many of us see our relationship with nature so clearly? COMMUTE POEMS helps to remind us of this relationship.

reviewer: Juliet Wilson.