T HE C ENACLE / A PRIL - The ElectroLounge

T HE C ENACLE / JUNE 2001 /19
published as a chapbook. In poems such as "In Early May" ("I too/ am wild and ready./ I too:/
Hiker—/ Seeker."), "Climbing" ("We sometimes are the love we seek"), and "The Ship of Love"
("The third eye opens in the sky/ I view the earth from moon’s new height"), the climber’s
quest for the peak is equated with the soul’s passage through existence, ascent into the
brighter light of greater knowledge. In "Climbing" Heitner writes that "Art is Spirit in search of
itself." Heitner’s poetic music is filled with strong mountain breezes, clear-eyed laughing
stuff, written by a strong rock-chafed hand.
Virginia Bergeron, an artist who has shown her work in shows & galleries in central
Connecticut, contributed artwork for seven of the first eight Cenacle covers as well as much
art within the magazine’s pages. I especially liked her renderings of trees; they are the result
of hours of contemplation over each stroke made upon the page. Trying to reproduce her
work on a desktop photocopier was a difficult task; often the finer details of the pictures
were lost. Computers equipped with scanners & graphics programs such as Photoshop are
much more able to handle such artwork.
From the beginning, The Cenacle strove to feature as many kinds of art as possible.
Fiction was very important among these. In Cenacles #1,2, 3, & 6 Mark Shorette’s "Dwelling
in a Land That is Waste" ran serially. Set in present-day Canaan & Hartford, it tells the story of
a judge & his daughter both of whom are confronting soul-writhing crises in their lives.
Shorette’s writing heats up to a epiphonic blaze at times, & confronts the very nature of
reality, ecstatic, woeful:
Somewhere along the way, the journey was lost. No more concept
exists of the pilgrimage, the hegira, the exodus. At Mecca, Jerusalem, and
Qum, the pilgrims arrive washed, clean-robed or suited, no mules, oxen, or
camels to be fed or watered, no oases to be sought to clean a week of grime
off the body, and to sate the thirst. There is no price.
Perhaps because our roads are marked, we no long seek signs.
In his story there is anger, softness, violence, dreams, satire, revelation.
Mark Bergeron contributed much poetry, fiction, & prose to early issues of The Cenacle.
His writing is by turns mystical, comical, & thoughtful. In Cenacle #1’s poem "What This
Room Means" he writes:
Do you fear the exit?
Do you fear to come in?
Is there a place to go
where the madness is gone?