Poetry of and about Niagara Falls & the Niagara River – the waterfalls, the city, the history, the stunters, and everything else Niagara
Source: Niagara Powerhouse by Joseph Housley was first published in Nashville Review, Issue 39, December 2022.
Joseph Housley’s poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Nashville Review, The Shore, and Sixth Finch, as well as other journals and anthologies. He was selected for a residency at Hewnoaks and received an MFA in poetry from The New School. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.
♪ ♪
Come all you young people
and listen to me,
Never smoke cigarettes or ♪
a corpse you will be,
For once it was smart, but ♫
now it’s forlorn,
And smoking will kill you
as sure as you’re born!
♪ ♪
The cartoon was drawn by Bob Chambers, who worked for the Halifax Chronicle Herald. It is presumed the ditty was written by him also.
Judy LaMarsh Niagara Falls resident, who became the federal Minister of Health from 1963-1965.
The consistent
consumer light
from the Circle K
that summer.
A mirage among
the sleeping suburb.
Zombie-like
worker.
Refrigerator
hummer.
The back wall
title text
cheap soda
happiness guarantee,
like broadcasting
palm trees
on a green screen.
Back out to
the parking lot
below the
practically perfect
Circle Moon
Source: The author, 2023
Convenient Corner was first published in Echolocation, vol. 20, March 2023. Convenient Corner was inspired by the Circle K on Thorold Stone Road, Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He studied English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, he is a MFA student at the University of South Carolina, studying poetry. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Feral Poetry, White Wall Review, The Bookends Review, and Echolocation Magazine.
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See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:
• The Buildings of the Dream
• Convenient Corner
• Lake Erie
• Russell Street
Tonight (May 18) at 7pm I’ll be doing the online presentation “The Niagara Way of Death: Depictions of Death & Near Death in the Poetry of Niagara Falls” at the Niagara Poetry Guild meeting. Please join us through the link at Meetup
Death is a pervasive topic in the poetry written about Niagara Falls. In the poetry of the 19th century, the Falls themselves were seen as a metaphor for death – the approach to death, the brink between life & death, the fall into purgatory, the ascension to heaven & the covenant between the human and the divine. See how the poetry of previous times as well as today reflect those metaphors, and how the 18 categories of death at Niagara Falls is treated in the poetry of the last 250 years.
Originally presented at the Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, Andrew Porteus will be sharing with us “The Niagara Way of Death: Depictions of Death and Near-Death Experiences at Niagara Falls” a 45 minute slide presentation.
To “J.” — written under the locust trees along the banks of the Niagara
In a realm of song and shine,
Where God’s sweetest wild flowers twine,
By Niagara’s singing stream,
Last night in a golden dream,
Wandered I, while at my side
Was a laughing maid, blue-eyed.
Spun from the silk of the corn
Were her tresses, waist length worn;
Fragile, as small pinkest shells
Her wee ears; like jingling bells
Tinkling in the soul of me
Her pure laugh of ecstacy.
Underneath the blossoming boughs
Of the locust, tender vows
Once again our young hearts made;
While the violins that played
Of the breeze, through blooms above,
Thrilled our souls with God’s first love
Source: Tom Lloyd Finlayson. Songs of Niagara Frontier and Other Poems; Autographed by the Author. St. Thomas, Sutherland Press, Limited. n.d.
Judging from the locations mentioned in the poems in this pamphlet it seems that Finlayson spent his childhood in Fort Erie, Ontario.