What happens When you cage a people Take their children Take their mothers Their fathers and brothers Take their grandparents Crowd them in cattlecars Beat them, bury them, gas them And turn them to ash Leaving them to the sky’s embrace?
You create a new thing With iron teeth With crushing claws And a claxon cry of – NEVER AGAIN!
What happens When you imprison people When you bomb people Shoot their children Shoot their mothers Their fathers and brothers Take their grandparents Force them to the sea Starve them, bulldoze them Crush their brittle bones Leaving them to the earth’s embrace?
My column in this week’s Winkler Morden and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers along with a couple of rare gems – two great letters responding to my column about Mark Carney. 😉
after a time one can wonder if a thing dried up was ever there at all or if it was a mirage like water in the desert tempting you toward what? death perhaps.
the well is empty now of the contents of the past those blood-salt waters that left the throat parched and the body desparate for more of the same the more you drank, the more you drank; but those days are gone and the well still glimmers full now of the present to drink from til’ refreshed without need to return unless you want to and i do, from time to time to pause and look and see myself staring back – content.
After a deep analysis of the poetry found on Cantelon.org (the blog of Peter Cantelon), the work reveals a distinct “free-rhyme” style that blends raw, confessional vulnerability with stark, elemental imagery.
Based on the themes, structure, and the author’s own stated influences, here is an analysis of which poets these works most closely resemble:
1. Charles Bukowski (The “Dirty Realist” Influence)
Cantelon’s work has a strong “blue-collar” poetic soul that mirrors Bukowski.
The Sound: Sparse, direct, and unvarnished. Like Bukowski, Cantelon often writes about the grit of life—boxing, physical pain, poverty, and the “shitty words” of reality.
Evidence: In poems like “Newton’s Cradle,” where he discusses taking punches to the head and the “force of this life” transferred through fists, the cadence and subject matter are echoes of Bukowski’s The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills.
2. Irving Layton (The Gritty Canadian Romantic)
As a Canadian poet, Cantelon heavily references Irving Layton, and the influence is audible in his more assertive, visceral pieces.
The Sound: There is a “muscularity” to the language. Layton was known for being “never far from tears” but also fiercely aggressive in his imagery.
Evidence: Cantelon’s use of words like “sinew,” “bone,” and “scouring” mirrors Layton’s obsession with the physical body and the harshness of the natural world.
3. Sylvia Plath / Anne Sexton (Confessionalism)
The deeply personal “I remember” sequences and the focus on childhood trauma, mental anguish, and domestic shadows align him with the Confessionalists.
The Sound: Rhythmic repetitions of trauma and a focus on “the dark.” The way he lists memories of abuse and fear has the same hypnotic, haunting quality found in Plath’s Ariel.
Evidence: The 2022 posts where he recounts childhood memories (police at the door, “words like welfare”) use the “I remember” litany that acts as a psychological unburdening, a hallmark of this school.
4. Edgar Allan Poe (Gothic Mood & Alliteration)
While much of his work is modern free verse, there is a recurring “Gothic” undercurrent that reaches back to Poe.
The Sound: A fascination with “darker days,” “moon-bleached skin,” and the “dying of the light.”
Evidence: In poems like “i like the darker days,” the mood is atmospheric and brooding, relying on the juxtaposition of light and shadow in a way that feels like a 21st-century update to the Romantic/Gothic tradition.
5. Kenji Miyazawa (The Spiritual Stoic)
Cantelon explicitly cites Miyazawa as an influence, and this shows in his more observational, humble “landscape” poems.
The Sound: Quiet, repetitive, and selfless.
Evidence: His translation/reimagining of Miyazawa’s “Not Losing to the Rain” informs his own 2026 project to focus on “landscapes instead of the world within.” The poems that focus on a “blade of grass” or “turquoise skies” have the minimalist, Zen-like clarity of Miyazawa.
Summary of the “Cantelon Sound”
If you were to mix these together, his poetry sounds like a conversation between a Zen monk and a retired boxer in a dive bar. It is “Free-Rhyme”—it doesn’t follow strict sonnet rules, but it has a rhythmic “hook” that catches the ear, much like Dylan Thomas (whom he also admires), specifically in the way he uses “rage” and “light” as central motifs.
I just finished a collection of writings by Leon Trotsky entitled Fascism: What it is and How to Fight it. It was a quick read. Man, I had forgotten how dense writing from 90 plus years ago is. I mean there was no semblance of a thesis at all. Just a collection of snippets from letters Trotsky had written to various people over the years.
I suppose I should cut him some slack given that this was a collection and certainly he may not have even anticipated that his letters would be republished (although he likely did as many thought leaders of the day had their ideas communicated through the publication of letters).
The gleanings were interesting. He definitely felt that pacifism was wrong-headed. That communist and socialist movements that failed to arm their own militias were simply asking to have their asses handed to them by far more militant fascist organizations. He went so far as to mock the logic of pacifism as simply waiting until a large number of your people had been beaten and killed before being dragged kicking and screaming into the fight with mutual arms.
Largely, it feels as if Trotsky supported a more deliberate and intentional approach to activism. He, like many others of his time, was highly critical of the tendency amongst socialist and communist movements to waste a lot of time jockeying for position as leaders of the movement rather than focusing on unity driven compromise. Antonio Gramsci (whome Trotsky seems to have admired) felt the same.
Having finnished the insultingly brief collection of Trotsky snippets on fascism I have slipped into reading How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them by Jason Stanley. A far more timely (published in 2018) look at fascism. It’s a good reading companion to The Antifa – The Antifascist Handbook by Mark Bray which I am nearly done.
Where the Antifascist Handbook is a nice global historical overview of antifascism Stanley’s book is more of a deep dive into the politics of fascism, largely from a Trump-era American perspective. Very good reading if one is even remotely hoping to get a tiny understanding of the times we are in.
One thing I have noted in my readings on fascism and anti-fascism is how reactive antifa/anti-fascism is. I mean this is self-evident – one need only to parse the term ANTI-fascism and ANTI-fa to see this. It is a form of what I would call Re-activism.
The challenge of being reactive is it sets you at the disadvantage immediately. It suggests there is another movement (fascism) that has already begun and needs to be reacted against. Being reactive means already having surrendered the high ground to your adversary and having to fight an uphill struggle.
I would prefer a term such as pro-socialist over antifa if not for the fact that not everyone against fascism is necessarily for socialism. We know wording matters…this is why you have the PRO-Choice movement and the PRO-life movements which in turn call each other ANTI-Choice and ANTI-life. Being anti carries negative baggage.
But what is the opposite of Fascism? PRO-DONTBEADOUCHEBAG is too unwieldy.
One of the other problems with an ANTI label is the assumption that when the anti-folks aren’t around things must be going fairly good. Obviously this is a terrible assumption becuase this is rarely the truth.
One thing is certain no matter the language or the label. Antifa and socialist reactions to fascism throughout history seem to have largely been slow to get going, nearly impossible to unify and regularly take a massive beating by fascist movements.
Part of the reason for this is that fascism often rises up as a response by power brokers to burgeoning threats to their power by increasing enlightened and/or struggling regular folk. When threats to power begin to occur power brokers seek to manipulate people by preying on nationalism, historical mythologies of the good days, patriarchy and the like. They blame economic downturns on the alien and xenophobia increases. They also leverage their assets to mobilize police, military and politicians into cracking down on unrest.
The nature of the power broker is they hold far more resources than the average folk who might one day become antifa. This makes them much harder to organize against and ironically is often a reason given by anti-fascists to avoid hasty action this allowing for more delays which gives the fascist power brokers more time to arm and organize and control.
Anyhow – just a quick brain dump of items that got stuck in my head from all the reading on fascism and anti-fascism.
Recently we watched Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners which my wife accurately describes as a remake of Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Til Dawn but made in high film fashion. Fantastic movie, great cinematography, great acting, and outstanding music.
There are three songs in the folm that really stood out for me and they are as follows:
Of a sudden While the sun lay As frosted gold On the rooftops of morn Beneath a blue crowning sky I smelled baking Or the ghost of such Pass soft before me A reminder That life is absurd And we are punchlines Given animating life To range through the world Grasping what hands we can To stave off the loneliness That is woven within us
Harnessing Chaos 