Terza Rimas for Virgil Burnett's Terra Cottas

There is to me something so incomprehensible in death, that I can neither speak nor think on the subject. -Lord Byron in a letter to John Hobhouse, August 10, 1811.

When we heard of the death of Virgil Burnett, my wife and I were overcome with a great sadness.  We had both been thinking about him, he was in our thoughts.

Books brought us all together. He came to our bookshop and often visited the library where my wife works and we always enjoyed his visits. We were not close friends but we did cherish the occasional invitations to his beautiful house and the fine dry white wine he shared, much like his wit. We both have fond memories of his graciousness and kindness.

For a number of years I was selling a small portion of his personal library on consignment.  I enjoyed sitting at a table at the back of his living room cataloguing his books and having his youthful cat, Arlequino, constantly curl his way around me as I worked.

Virgil's terra cotta sculptures fascinated me.  In a letter to me, in thanks for the poem I wrote about his sculptures, he said, "I am very flattered and so are my clay ladies, vainglorious baggages that they are." His wit and humour always hovering nearby. The poem is an acrostic one and he said, in his usual understated manner, "I have never been acrosticized before--not to my knowledge anyway."  The small appendages to his sentences, little afterthoughts and reflections, are to be found in his novels and stories as well as in his speech. His very style. Le style est l'homme meme. His patience too can be seen in the lines of his illustrations.

Many, many, many people will miss him. I know we will.

Terza Rimas for Virgil's Terra Cottas

Voluptuous embodiments alight,
In stasis, dancing to an ancient song;
Redeeming Love, and Fortune's round delight.
Gyrating with this earthen world, yet strong
In vigil, burnished with a fixed desire,
Life-giving forms to guide our souls along.

By silent stillness, sculptures do inspire,
Unveiling what is ripe within.  One's hope
Renews, that truth and beauty do conspire.
Noetic visions through the figure's scope.
Eternal shapes transcendent into thought,
Transparent with the weight of mythic trope,

Though sensual, through tactile passions sought.

-ralph patrick mackay

feburary 2006.

Sail on the Horizon: Reading Virgil Burnett's Scarbo Edge: a Romaunt

Scarbo Edge: a Romaunt by Virgil Burnett / with illustrations by the author (Blaurock Press, 2008).

About six pages into Scarbo Edge: a romaunt, an intuitive presumption of familiarity stilled my reading eyes. . . first chapter called 'The Golden Ampersand' . . . night train from Paris to Venice . . . a passionate tryst . . . . . . Venice . . . an erotic assignation. In a visual sense, these would be the first shadowy crosshatchings of my interaction with the text--one reading over another, a memory rising up from the shadows--from the past.

This evocative novel's first chapter appeared--I finally remembered--in a literary journal, an issue devoted to Venice. Not able to remember the specific journal, I did remember the cover image, a rather distinctive animal-faced Venetian door-knocker, and it was by this remembered image that I was able to trace the journal among my wife's collection: Descant, 128, Spring 2005. Looking at it now, I am fascinated by the eyes of this creature which seem almost alive with a sad resignation, as if weary of but another visitor wishing to gain entry, but another soul announcing their arrival. Within this same issue, there is a portfolio of photographs taken by the author when he was in Venice in the late 1950s--France and Italy being an annual pilgrimage for this artist/author. These photographs reveal a city of locals going about their business, a city that had yet to see the inundation of 'tourists' much bemoaned by present day writers such as Javier Marias in a fairly recent article. Perhaps the eyes of this creature reflect the present rise of landfalls and departures--the weight of the worlds' footsteps vibrating through the lagoons.

It is a city in which we find our idealistic hero Eber and his singular love, Isa, secretly celebrating their relationship. Eber, many years ago, met Isa when they were in architecture school, he three years her senior. They began an affair which was casual, non-possessive, modern. When Eber took a position with Marcus Associates he travelled widely and yet he always returned to renew his love with Isa. Disillusioned with Marcus' emphasis on making money and developing properties rather than creating innovative architecture, Eber resigned and travelled the world in an attempt to realign his life. Being an excellent draughtsman, he found work with archaeologists on Iron-age Celtic sites from Malta to Brittany to Cornwall. Years pass. He discovers that Isa has married Marcus, a loveless marriage of convenience. After their tryst in Venice and some attempts to cure his singular obsession, Eber returns to Canada, renting a somewhat run-down Victorian pile called Scarbo Edge on the rough coast of Lake Huron not far from Falaise, Marcus' mansion where Eber has discovered Isa resides. And so their relationship is renewed, fraught with dangers from the present, and possibly mirrored in the past.

Scarbo Edge is not only a variation on the Tristan and Isolde legend--the eternal love triangle, that triadic template for much of the Western narrative tradition from the Iliad on--but it incorporates a variation of the suspense genre as well. It is both an old story and a new one. It is a story of passionate physical love, of eroticism, of singular desire. A narrative richly veined with allusions and ambiguities, dualities and duplicities, ghostly parallels, existential wanderings, and mythic ordeals.

Virgil Burnett, artist and author, is a master of the line--'proportion, anatomy, and composition'-- and this mastery, informed by a wealth of experience and knowledge, finds its equivalence in his written word . His style is one of a born story-teller, both simply told and beautifully written. His descriptions of the physical relationship of a man and a woman is both exquisitely poetic, and vigorously real. A rich addition to Virgil Burnett's diverse oeuvre.

The Book of Joe

When I was still running a bricks and mortar bookshop, I had the great pleasure of meeting many erudite and artistic customers. Stratford is home to many visual artists, writers, and musicians which makes the city a lively and diverse community. Especially in the summer months. One of my customers was Virgil Burnett, an accomplished renaissance man: artist, illustrator, author, professor, sculptor, and publisher--if he raises rare orchids I wouldn't be surprised. Virgil asked me if I would like to carry a few copies of one of his latest publications, The Book of Joe: Joseph Plaskett and the Art of Painting which he published under his imprint Pasdeloup Press and co-edited with Bruce Barber. I said I would be delighted.

It is a handsome book, with cream coloured paper covers and is finely illustrated throughout with the art work of the acclaimed Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett whose friends and colleagues have contributed reminiscences, poems and stories about their compatriot in the arts. It also includes a brief essay on art by Plaskett and an interview with the artist by the well-known Canadian broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel. The stories and anecdotes about the artist are wonderfully entertaining and informative, and the last reminiscence in the book is worth the cover price alone.

It is a book to have nearby. A book to dip into occasionally and re-read for the insights and the humour, and to enjoy the beauty of the artist's work.