CARILLONNEUR   by Tony Cosier

Penumbra Poetry Series, Vol. 68

Penumbra Press, Newcastle, ON,  (fall) 2012, 96pp.

ISBN 978-1-897323-22-9

 

Reviewed by:  Ronnie R. Brown

 

     It is a real joy to discover a new Tony Cosier/Penumbra collaboration since both poet and press have a long-standing reputation for excellence and  Carillonneur only  serves to enhance  that

reputation.

 

     Born and raised in B.C., Cosier has been part of the Ottawa writing scene for decades.  An Ottawa high school English teacher for thirty years, Cosier now writes full time.  The author of nine previous poetry collections, five plays, a novel and a short story collection, Cosier has been short-listed three times for the Ottawa Book Awards and was a finalist four times (twice with honourable mention) for Ottawa's Archibald Lampman Award for poetry.

 

      Carillonneur, Cosier's tenth  poetry book, offers strong narrative lines supported by equally strong descriptive technique.  Cosier paints a picture then allows the reader to enter into it.  Opening with an introductory poem, the collection is then divided into four sections:  Natural Things; Saw Music; Playwright; and My Mother's Dance.

 

     As might be expected, Natural Things deals with the world around us.   A long-time nature photographer,  Cosier's writings  often deal with  the beauty and ferocity  Mother Nature offers up .  And given  poems like "Ladies' Lookout," a place and poem that seems to suggest a picnic at which

ladies' "...flirt in breeze -tilted hats/"  but is, in fact, a kind of widows' watch where wives and daughters

looked with  "eyes that strained through the mist" for loved ones off at sea, or poems describing  meadows where hay in "fifty golden rolls/ burn like planets in the sun/," or even a  few old churches whose doors"...swing a wide open welcome," it is clear  Cosier is both aware and wary of the natural world.

 

     Saw Music, on the other hand,  is comprised of a series of poems which explore and pay homage to creativity as evidenced by the lives of musicians, artists and poets.  It is here that the reader can

experience Mozart composing his first Mass with "Haydn mentoring over his shoulder/"  watching "...notes emerging on the page."  Here too, is Anna Van Gogh realizing her son's genius and understanding "the underswelling he feels."  And, of course, there is the promised "saw music"

of the section's title complete with the saw's "...shrill notes..." quavering "eerily."  

 

     Playwright continues with the theme of Saw Music, but instead of looking at various

creators, it , instead, a suite of poems about the Irish playwright John Millington Synge who

slipped away to the sound of "...all the women of Ireland/ keening all their dead."

      In the collection's final section, My Mother's Dance,  Cosier explores his own past and the tight family bonds that helped to shape his life and his work.  Here even the B.C. mountains can be seen as a playmate, one  who has  "...rolled up its rounded bulk..." and is "hunched like a frog ready to jump with you," or appear "snow capped" and dancing "flexing their glaciers like wings."       

      Those who are looking for the ultra-modern or the super trendy should be fore-warned -- Cosier's

poems are not the product of a computer program, nor are they derived from   lines hastily jotted on napkins.   What Cosier gives the reader in Carillonneur are  well-edited pieces of writing which pay homage to the past while still advancing the art of poetry.  Be assured,   the final product is a beautiful and memorable collection that should be read--and then read again.

 

 

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RONNIE R. BROWN is an Ottawa writer.  The author of six books of poetry, she has been short-listed three times for the Acorn-Plantos People's Poetry Award, winning in 2006 for STATES OF MATTER (Black Moss, 205).  Her most recent collection is ROCKING ON THE EDGE (Black Moss, 2010.)