This is a 96 page, book-length poem about John, from Rhode Island, who takes a trip first to New York City and then to Niagara Falls by boat and train. His romantic encounters are described, as well as the adventures he has in Niagara Falls with hackmen, swindlers, and hustlers. At the same time, he is impressed with the natural beauty of the Falls.
Read the full poem at Hathi Trust
Citation: Barlow, John R. John’s Trip, or a Visit to Niagara. A Serio-Comic Poem in Four Cantos. Niagara Falls: William Pool, Printer, 1871
Rendezvous Motel & Restaurant, 3611 Lundy’s Lane, Highway 3a & 20, Niagara Falls, Canada. Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library
In the town where I was born, we’d walk up Lundy’s Lane And talk about the dreams we had. Life was a glass of ginger ale and a juke box serenade, And we never thought of growing old. Yes, I know those days have come and gone Still I think about my old home town.
At a place called the Rendezvous, we’d congregate at eight And talk about the baseball game. Lights flashing on the window pane, watching cars go up the lane, We’d wait for friends and lovers. Yes, I know those days have come and gone Still I think about my old home town.
Lavender mist makes a foggy night haze While the falls come crashing ahead. And I lean on the rail feel the damp cooling spray Watching the foam turn a luminous maze.
And as I drive towards the town, the neon signs flash on And thoughts begin to fill my head. Oh the happiness I found, in my family’s old home town Where nothing seemed to ever change. Life was very simple, way back then And we thought that it would never end.
When our dreams of long ago were scattered on the way And our childish hopes departed. Life went on but not the same, we grew up, we’re not to blame, And those magic times forgotten. Life was very simple, way back then And we thought that it would never end.
Source: Niagara Falls (Ontario). Coronation Centre Newsletter, 1974
Narushima Ryūhoku published in book Ryuhoku Ikou, 1892
The startled traveler wakes to the thunder by his pillow,
rises and climbs among old trees to the roaring brink:
in the deep night, heaven and earth one vista of white;
the moon comes, parting the mile-high curtain of pearls.
Translated by Burton Watson
Source: Watson, Burton (tr.). Japanese Literature in Chinese, vol. 2: Poetry & Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Later Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976
Apple, a memoir in verse and pictures by Eric Gansworth is an important addition to the literature of Niagara. Gansworth, who was raised on the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County, New York, just outside Niagara Falls, still resides in the area and teaches in Buffalo, NY. The book has been longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award and is a Junior Library Guild selection.
Publisher supplied book information:
How about a book that makes you barge into your boss’s office to read a page of poetry from? That you dream of? That every movie, song, book, moment that follows continues to evoke in some way?
The term “Apple” is a slur in Native communities across the country. It’s for someone supposedly “red on the outside, white on the inside.”
Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple: Skin to the Core. The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds.
Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.
Run to your nearest library or book store to read this remarkable collection by Eric Gansworth.
Who does not know that dreadful gulf, where Niagara falls,
Where eagle unto eagle screams, to vulture vulture calls;
Where down beneath, Despair and Death in liquid darkness grope,
And upward, on the foam there shines a rainbow without Hope;
While, hung with clouds of Fear and Doubt, the unreturning wave
Suddenly gives an awful plunge, like life into the grave;
And many a hapless mortal there hath dived to bale or bliss;
One—only one—hath ever lived to rise from that abyss!
Oh, Heav’n! it turns me now to ice, with chill of fear extreme,
To think of my frail bark adrift on that tumultuous stream!
In vain with desperate sinews, strung by love of life and light,
I urged that coffin, my canoe, against the current’s might:
On—on—still on—direct for doom, the river rush’d in force,
And fearfully the stream of Time raced with it in its course.
My eyes I closed—I dared not look the way towards the goal;
But still I view’d the horrid close, and dreamt it in my soul.
Plainly, as through transparent lids, I saw the fleeting shore,
And lofty trees, like winged things, flit by for evermore;
Plainly,—but with no prophet sense—I heard the sullen sound,
The torrent’s voice—and felt the mist, like death-sweat gathering round.
O agony! O life! My home! and those that made it sweet:
Ere I could pray, the torrent lay beneath my very feet.
With frightful whirl, more swift than thought, I passed the dizzy edge,
Bound after bound, with hideous bruise, I dashed from ledge to ledge,
From crag to crag,—in speechless pain,—from midnight deep to deep;
I did not die,—but anguish stunn’d my senses into sleep.
How long entranced, or whither dived, no clue I have to find:
At last the gradual light of life came dawning o’er my mind;
And through my brain there thrill’d a cry,—a cry as shrill as birds’
Of vulture or of eagle kind, but this was set to words:—
‘It’s Edgar Huntley in his cap and nightgown, I declares!
He’s been a walking in his sleep, and pitch’d all down the stairs!’
Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker is a 1799 novel by the American author Charles Brockden Brown that was popular at the time this poem was written.
Source: Thomas Hood. The Works of Thomas Hood: Comic, in Prose and Verse, with all the Original Illustrations. vol. 1. London: Ward, Lock & Co., 1882
