Book Review #2 This Accident of Being Lost

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is an Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist. The Accident of Being Lost is her second book of  mixed poetry and fiction. This book is much like the material it explores, it resists categorization by being at the intersection of  prose and poetry.  Other reviews talk about it as a collection of songs, short stories, poems. You could say that or if you are a reader of contemporary poetry you just say it is all poetry.  She deals with intersections of groups and how the speakers in the book personally relate to the tensions coming from these intersections. 

Simpson is exploring the personal and the social.  We don’t know which if any of the stories are factually true but they seem like poetically true experiences of a First Nations woman thinking about her place in the world and looking at the other be that different races, sexes, gendered and non-gendered relationships.  Exploring the suburbs, the reservation, the wilderness and all the differing attitudes of those that inhabit those locales as well as the attitude of the speaker of the work. 

The Accident Of Being Lost is a fascinating work, a piece of literature that delivers in a consistent voice that feels sardonic, observant, self deprecatory, angry, bewildered and thoughtful. Thoughtful about herself and trying to understand the other, whoever that other maybe from her primary relationship or a relationship that exists just on the internet through social media.  And the uncertainty of the speaker about herself and the world draws us in along with an urgent sense of humour. This writer is not only unafraid of being inconsistent or unsure but highlights how we all live as surely as we can in uncertainty.  Within this uncertainty humour is used but often to dilute something heart breaking underneath the humour.  

The book is written in the first person so it has the feel of biography. But that adds to the poetic effect, that this subjective view point is not necessarily literally the author of the book but the reader experiences it as such.  As we move through the book the I, which seems to have a consistent voice, traversing place, time and relationships with no clue as to whether the events in the book are linked.  

I’ve been doing an MFA at a private university in the Bay Area.  There is a lot of exploration of race here around the literature of the US and the context of literature.   That was not something I thought much about for the decades I was ensconced in the old white male bastion called Imperial Oil, the Canadian subsidiary of Exxon.  I grew up in the old Canada, the one that was mostly white and in the case of Toronto, mostly white anglo saxon protestant.  This is in high contrast to today’s Canada with our multi cultural mosaic but that is also continues to be home to racism, hidden and overt.  

I lived in a city near Toronto where we had a total of two black kids in our whole high school, brothers. That family might have been the only blacks in the city of 20,000.  Canada has changed a lot since them, but despite that cultural background I have though of myself as a supporter of liberal causes, I felt from my position of relative privilege I owe it to marginalized groups to support their efforts, if only mostly in spirit.  

I learned a few years ago from a Metis writer friend that I have no idea how people of other groups think.  She was telling me about growing up and attending Banff Indian Days, the event that started off as a way to entertain bored hotel patrons by bringing in local First Nations people and have them perform for the rich hotel patrons. I thought to myself “Oh my God, how could we think of exploiting our native population that way”. Then she said “When I was young I loved it”.

I found myself once again exploring my white liberal guilt as I read Simpson’s book.  As a matter of fact she calls people like me out on it.  In the second piece in the book, Plight, the speaker and two friends are going to go into a neighbourhood to mark maple trees so they can tap them the next spring to make maple syrup.  She describes the neighbourhood as “They have perennials instead of grass.  They get organic, local vegetables delivered twice weekly, in addition, to going to the farmers’ market on Saturday.”  Simpson lightly makes fun of a progressive neighbourhood in ways that seem very true, very much like where I live in urban Hamilton.  

She then goes on take it another step describing how they neighbourhood wants to be designated heritage so you can’t modify in ways so that “it isn’t from the 1800’s or rent your extra floors to the lower class”.    This observation works on two levels in terms of extending the effect of the writing.  The first is this idea of nostalgia by the property owners for the 1880’s, a time of colonization for much of Canada’s First Nations,  the second is the an apparent hypocrisy related to the progressive nature of the neighbourhood that wants to block poor people from living there. The darker side of this progressive neighbourhood is subtly exposed. 

After this setup Simpson really goes for the jugular when talking about getting permission to tap the trees from the neighbourhood.  “We know how to do this so they’ll be into it. Hand out the flyers first. Have a community meeting. Ask permission. Listen to their paternalistic bullshit and feedback. Let them have influence. Let them bask in the plight of the Native people so they can feel self-righteous.  Make them feel better, and when reconciliation comes up at the next dinner party, they can hold us up as the solution and brag to their real friends about our plight.”

Simpson is  talking about more than tapping trees here, talking about ways power has managed to exploit First Nations through supposed consultation. She is turning these techniques around and using them on the oppressor, she brings in the word “reconciliation” which evokes the Truth and Reconciliation commission process around the tragedy of residential schools where First Nations children were yanked from their homes and sent to residential schools where many suffered sexual, physical and verbal abuse. She also increases the power of her indictment of the progressive community and at the same time shows how this can be exploited.  She maybe is portraying a stilted view of that community but it is believable that a member of the outsider marginalized community would have that view and the colonialist community would be unaware. 

She then finishes the paragraph with the line “I proofread the flyer one more time because everyone knows white people hate typos”.  This line is an example of how Simpson’s book works so well.  The humour is this line is bi-directional.  It simultaneously makes fun of white people but also of the First Nations speaker’s truisms about white people.  And for me that is the trick Simpson pulls off throughout this book.  Highlighting hypocrisy of others while at the same time apply self-deprecating humour to lighten the material. This what I mean about the text existing in the intersections.  This intersection between two groups on white attitudes produces truth but also humour.  

After this early piece I am constantly on guard for my own liberal white bias in approaching the work.  Even writing this review I am thinking about my reaction in those terms.  I am aware up until this point I much of what I have written about this work relates to myself and other white people, a fact I don't think would surprise Simpson.  While that is a component of this book it isn’t what the book is only about.  Mostly it is about a complex woman try to understand her role and feelings in an alienating and confusing world,  a world she has inherited that is full of unfairness.  And yet here I have focused my race in terms of my relating to the work.  I think making me think about this is an important outcome from this piece of literature.  Through the author’s own exploration of the world we all participate with our own lenses. 

In a later piece of short segmented prose set around her time at a writer’s colony in Banff during a major flood she talks about about her listening to the CBC and NPR and knowing the personality on the radio but also says “she has a fair amount of contempt for all the middle-class white people huddled around the radio listening to that shit” This is a pretty good reflection of other occurrences in the book,  the speaker’s part of the white culture but also not, with  the author’s PhD and literary success she’s part of the country’s intelligentsia but not.  The speaker sometimes seems middle class but  often has roots that aren’t.

The book is excellent on many levels.  The prose and poetry pieces are all well written with a shifting subject but with a consistent voice.  The exploration of race, sexuality, consumerism and the difficulty we all have with understanding others is both obvert and nuanced.  The author shares her bewilderment with the world and we engage with her in that bewilderment while examining our own attitudes. 

Radical Revision #2 Emily's Poem as a Ghazal

California Irregardless: A Ghazal

A rose is a rose, or maybe not, they keep lettin’ the water out

soul is missing, too many housing starts end up lettin’ the water out.

In this drought is a missing stanza, not sure of their intentions

the California law’s no boogeyman, they keep lettin’ the water out.

That’s Ratto luck only in the Neenee world

luck’s different in God’s world, always lettin’ the water out.

With blankets pulled over heads, no can do the laundry 

we judge the cut of Vargas’s lawn, how they’re lettin’ the water out. 

Neenee says towels are not sufficient, God says that’s our luck

Emily, says Neenee, you seem tired. Please let the water out. 

Radical Revision Exercise #1

Radical Revision

A Joke Comes To Me About Ecopoetics For Business Students

Tree or moss, there is never
an answer in the wind despite

what has been said or sung or you may have
thought you heard.  Look to see if boots crush

new born grass, look to see if crushes have
ever been new born grass, look to see if radical revision

of a past alleviates boredom or vermisilitude
an antidote to dying live oaks. Alternate facts

or alternate realities, the appearance of truth
more than matter of fact.  The sound of moss

growing not up for debate.  Exploitive
in the end seems to be just another salve

for half charged capability.



Original

Thinking About Business Below A Dead Live Oak

This old tree, a rope barrier around it to try and protect
it but the drought may have killed, only small brown leaves left
here and there.  Moss and lichen ignore the state of the tree, thrive off the
tree whether dead or alive, while not visible I’m sure life is below the
bark as well,  rotting wood provides a good home for
those that live off the dead or dying.

A joke comes to me about ecopoetics for business students that are here too,
how they are getting insight into the best ways to exploit
the natural world, what opportunities, what can be leveraged.
Perhaps a lesson from the moss or the lichen and this tree.

Beside me a woman’s grey Puma trainer crushes brown leaves
into mud.  Fresh tiny blades of grass break through the dirt on the other side
of the rope barrier.  Look to see if my boot crushes any new grass.
It’s not.

Probably dead, bare branches reach towards a grey blank sky.
Which I must ask myself,  the tree or the moss?

further further further work on after the movie

ok, final version. went to a formal triplet structure.  David brought up the uneven system for stanzas and the indents.  I was resistant to that at first but a comment from Geoffrey O'Brien on my thesis brought that into focus for me.

"feels like a charged repudiation of “order” or tidiness and it too can have its place. But two things about it: 1) its frequency also begins to slacken its expressivity in that it tapers to ONLY expressing this commitment to asymmetry and 2) as a dissipation of traditional form it joins up with the reverse Haibun effect to form a double assault on the expressive capacities of ruled lineation—in other words, I think you have to pick (for the most part) either this variability of line or line’s dissipation into prose because they duplicate the same principled undoing rather than complicating and informing each other. "

I took from this some of this results in a feeling of sloppiness rather than deliberate design.  At any rate I decided to structure the poem more strictly.  Here it is.

After The Movie
(After Marie Howe’s After The Movie)

My friend Michael & I cross King Street West, dodging
traffic, arguing about the movie. He says he believes success
& happiness are tied— you can only have one if you have

the other. I say, No they don’t have anything to do
with each other,  that’s like saying shoes are necessary
to have a coat. He says  But that is true,

no point having a coat to go outside if you don’t
have shoes. There’ll come a day you’ll stay inside
for good if you don’t have both.

I say,  That sounds like you had happiness before that day.
He says, You might have thought you were happy but
then you realized you were unsuccessful.

I say, What you mean by happiness sounds more like
a business arrangement. I say, Happiness isn’t conditional.
He says, It’s conditional on what it takes to be happy.

We’re now standing in front of the Snooty Fox—
the old Westdale Theatre’s marquee blinking
half on & mostly off across the street— & I hear my voice

saying what I say to myself all the time— Most
everyone’s life is pretty well mediocre at best
& really should anyone ask for more?

Michael takes hold of my elbow.  Yes, he says, They can
& fucking well should. Inside we order Barking Squirrels
from our bartender, burly & bearded.

The beer is dark, rich burnt orange. I sip it like
I have never seen beer before. Hey, I say, Didn't
this conversation feel kind of like Marie Howe’s

poem, After the Movie? I was just thinking that,
says Michael, Though this sure isn’t New York City
and you aren’t nearly as smart as the speaker

in that poem.  Funny, I say, I was just thinking
how you aren’t nearly as smart as her Michael.
We both sip our beer some more.

What are you up to tomorrow? says Michael.
But what I think he is saying is—
“You are a failure, you should stay in your house forever.”

Then I think “Does he know I want to remain
bewildered?” The noise level is rising, laughter
coming  from somewhere, glasses clinking

somewhere. Although we just got to the bar
we both have been here a very long time.
I say, Try not to be a man of success said Einstein.

Michael says, Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre
said Camus.  Our bartender jumps in, Stupidity
lies in wanting to draw conclusions said Flaubert.

Outside the marquee still blinks no-blinks,
blurred red tail lights pass by on King St West,
I know down the side street

my perfectly squat house sits perfectly
darkly quiet, at the end of that street is the trail
into the woods where nocturnal beasts wander.

further further work on After the movie

discussing with MZ how close this poem mirrors the inspiring poem.  one idea he had was to acknowledge that in the poem.  so here is my attempt at doing that.

After The Movie

(After Marie Howe’s After The Movie)

My friend Michael & I cross King Street West, dodging traffic, arguing 

about the movie. He says he believes success & happiness are tied—

you can only have one if you have the other.

I say, No they don’t have anything to do with each other, 

that’s like saying shoes are necessary to have a coat. 

He says  But that is true, no point having a coat 

to go outside if you don’t have shoes.  There’ll come a day

you’ll stay inside for good if you don’t have both. 

I say,  That sounds like you had happiness before that day. 

He says, You might have thought you were happy but 

then you realized you were unsuccessful.  

I say, What you mean by happiness sounds more like 

a business arrangement. I say, Happiness isn’t conditional.

He says, It’s conditional on what it takes to be happy.  

We’re now standing in front of the Snooty Fox— the old Westdale Theatre’s marquee 

blinking half on & mostly off across the street— & I hear my voice 

saying what I say to myself all the time— 

Most everyone’s life is pretty well mediocre at best & really

should anyone ask for more?

Michael takes hold of my elbow.  

Yes, he says, They can & fucking well should.

Inside we order Barking Squirrels from our bartender, burly & bearded.

The beer is dark, rich burnt orange. I sip it like I have never seen beer before. 

Hey, I say,  Didn't this conversation feel kind of like
we’re in the Marie Howe poem, After the Movie?

I was just thinking that, says Michael, Though this
sure isn’t New York City  and you
aren’t nearly as smart as the speaker in that poem.

Funny, I say, I was just thinking how you aren’t nearly as smart as her Michael.

We both sip our beer. 

What are you up to tomorrow? says Michael. 

But what I think he is saying is—“You are a failure, you should stay in your house forever.”

Then I think “Does he know I want to remain bewildered?”

The noise level is rising, laughter coming 

from somewhere, glasses clinking somewhere. Although we just got to the bar

we both have been here a very long time. 

I say, Try not to be a man of success said Einstein.  

Michael says, Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre said Camus.  

Our bartender jumps in, Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions said Flaubert.

Outside the marquee still blinks no-blinks, blurred red tail lights pass by 

on King St West, I know down the side street

my perfectly squat house sits perfectly 

darkly quiet, at the end of that street is the trail 

into the woods where the nocturnal beasts wander.

further work on After The Movie

I took the input from everybody last week and revised my After the Movie Poem. I also have decided to extend the poem further with a lyric moment. Dan said the last line was like a punch line (which he liked). Sara suggested that perhaps my poem had outgrown the quotes. In thinking about that I thought maybe the poem was being closed down too much by the use of the quotes at the end. So here is the version with the additional ending and using the edits that came out of the workshop.

After The Movie
(After Marie Howe’s After The Movie)

My friend Michael & I cross King Street West, dodging traffic, arguing
about the movie. He says he believes success & happiness are tied—

you can only have one if you have the other.

I say, No they don’t have anything to do with each other,
that’s like saying shoes are necessary to have a coat.

He says  But that is true, no point having a coat
to go outside if you don’t have shoes.  There’ll come a day
you’ll stay inside for good if you don’t have both.

I say,  That sounds like you had happiness before that day.

He says, You might have thought you were happy but
then you realized you were unsuccessful.

I say, What you mean by happiness sounds more like
a business arrangement. I say, Happiness isn’t conditional.

He says, It’s conditional on what it takes to be happy.

We’re now standing in front of the Snooty Fox— the old Westdale Theatre’s marquee
blinking half on & mostly off across the street— & I hear my voice
saying what I say to myself all the time—

Most everyone’s life is pretty well mediocre at best & really
should anyone ask for more?

Michael takes hold of my elbow.
Yes, he says, They can & fucking well should.

Inside we order Barking Squirrels from our bartender, burly & bearded.

The beer is dark, rich burnt orange. I sip it like I have never seen beer before.

What are you up to tomorrow? says Michael.

But what I think he is saying is—“You are a failure, you should stay in your house forever.”

Then I think “Does he know I want to remain bewildered?”

The noise level is rising, laughter coming
from somewhere, glasses clinking somewhere. Although we just got to the bar
we both have been here a very long time.

I say, Try not to be a man of success said Einstein.

Michael says, Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre said Camus.

Our bartender jumps in, Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions said Flaubert.

Outside the marquee still blinks no-blinks, blurred red tail lights pass by
on King St West, I know down the side street

my perfectly squat house sits perfectly
darkly quiet, at the end of that street is the trail

into the woods where the nocturnal beasts wander.

using other poems as templates

I wrote here about this poem by Marie Howe and gave my attempt at emulating the moves Marie makes in her poem.

Arisa and I discussed the poem in tutorial and she came up with a few changes to help.  But after looking at what I came up with I realized there was something wrong, that I wasn't getting much of what I enjoyed about Marie's poem into this work.  I decided to blow up the poem and take some of the pieces to make a new one I hope would be more successful.   To do that I decided to try and mirror Marie's poem in terms of the moves she was making so I tried to de-construct After the Movie.  This looked something like this.

Start by providing the setting and introducing the two characters
Provide an argument for the two characters that seems surprising (Marie's was you can love someone but murder them)
Then go back and forth on this argument in an interesting way
Further situate the discussion in the real world
At some point the speaker uses an old argument with someone and then goes internal
In the internal space uses quotes from famous people from a variety of fields around the argument
Come back to the real world
Have a surprising response to the other person's question that goes somewhere very different
Close with images and thoughts that seem to say something about the relationship of the characters

My initial piece had some of this but was missing much of the finer moves that take place. At a high level I had an argument but it wasn't as surprising and took a while to develop, I also a situation and some quotes. But not nearly the internal stuff or the surprising mis-interpretation of the question.  I threw out much of the dialogue that I had written and focused on the movement like Marie's.  I'm not saying mine is as interesting, I wish it was but it is closer than my first attempt.  I decided to shift gears for the ending, using the quotes idea but having various speakers say them to move the poem to termination.

I'm workshopping the result of this work today. I am also hoping I have moved far enough from the original structure that I have created my won work

Dialogue Prompt

This poem is a response to the prompt "write a dialogue", It's something I wrote earlier this school year but took the prompt as an invitation to edit it further

After A Walk By Lake Merritt

She says she thinks it’s more about what we are called by,

some confusion about the politics themselves,

how mothers sometimes think the opposite or go by feelings,

she says she’s given up telling people what to do.

It’s one thing to feel sad it’s another to talk non stop about it, she says, something

I need to keep in mind I think.

I say like the Stones said “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometime you get what you need”

She says I think I know the song but not that lyric.

She says she hates the bare hills, they make her feel claustrophobic. 

And in the sky above Oakland a super moon which the internet says won’t occur again for almost twenty years but we both remember the internet saying a similar thing a few months ago and we both know the rain is coming not long from now, we can tell. 

We stop.  Look at the moon. She’s thinking about when she’ll see it again like that. I’m thinking I’ll be dead.

Personalized Prompt Poem

My group assigned me this:

• a person poem human or non-human but it must be clear
• situation must be clear, 
• narrative is there is one non-linear or objective
• if “you” it must be an other not the”I’”

Here's the poem:

Dark Night Blues

You are my friend, F

I wonder at your choices

and wonder at mine too

How you choose to live

with too much

It wasn't always that way

Your simple chicken coop apartment

behind the old coach house

You remember that, you told me

that was the best time for you

Before you got all high and mighty

you used to say you got "mighty high"

A joke of course, you never drank or smoked

A natural high you'd say, just on life you'd say

and then run outside naked or jump up on the roof 

How everything changed with money

your big house, your fancy car

and no fun anymore, your employees

told me they hate you  A sadness comes

over me and it's you underneath 
all that stuff, still wanting to get high
and not able to get up 

Manifesto - Xenia Poetics

Manifesto for the Movement of Xenia Poetics

We are tired of hearing the phrases “accessible” and “inaccessible” casually tossed about as if we all agree about these words mean when in fact they are totally subjective terms. One poet’s accessible poetry could be boring to certain readers or completely inaccessible to others. We also support the goals of encouraging and welcoming wider readership to the poetic world without giving up the depth available in poetry.  To this end we propose the following for poetry that anyone belonging to this movement will employ:

1) The movement name Xenia  comes from the ancient greek word for the concept of hospitality, the generosity and courtesy shown to those who are far from home.

2) As such we will be accessible within this definition: an emotional through-line will be available to readers and the poem transparently demonstrates this availability with its content, word choice, syntax and form making multiple intelligences welcome.

3) Content comes first, the form must be chosen for specific definable reasons

4) We will utilize  sensation, feeling, emotion that the body goes through to infuse in the poem

5) Having said that we believe in the creative autonomy of the poet and when writing the audience is not with the poet, but is welcomed afterwards.

Our aim broadens the outreach of poetry without giving up creative depth and meaning.

Strangeness and poetry

This video has gone viral recently, it is a claymation piece of art by Kirsten Lepore.  People report it makes them feel both uncomfortable and also calm and soothed, sometimes at the same time.  It obviously is getting at something psychological with its strangeness, something it seems to me poetry can also sometimes do. Part of the effect is the intimacy this stranger establishes with the viewer almost immediately, I think that is part of the discomfort and then further intimacy is implied, including knowledge of the viewer themselves. So why to people find it soothing if still creepy. Though intimacy is established the creature seems to also be empathic and affirming. The music also helps. I'm going to maybe try and write a poem that works these same modes. If it is successful to any extent I will post. I have also included the Stephen Colbert sendup of Hi Stranger, it is not poetic but is funny

Hi Stranger from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

What I don't write about

my  4 kids, my 3 grandkids, my parents when i was a kid, my childhood other that time at a cottage, my siblings

Book Review I - A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (Draft)

Need to clean up a bit still, provide references etc. But the content of what I want to say is mostly there. 


Stuart Ross’ A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent

Stuart Ross has been writing poetry for a long time. His bio says “Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like ‘Writer Going To Hell,’ selling over 7,000 chapbooks.” He is now the author of 20 books of poetry, fiction and essays. In preparation for writing this review of his latest book “A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent” (Wolsak and Wynn 2016) I wrote him and asked if he had anything he wanted to say about this book.  He said that the only point he might make would be he tried to write a book that is more accessible and personal than much of his previous work.  

I’ve been thinking about that.  The work is definitely personal, we’ll talk about that a bit later.  But “accessible” is highly subjective.  I really love this work.  But it is soaked in quirkiness. Does that make it accessible or not? For some the idea of accessible means it has less value for others it means it has more interest.  I’ve had this discussion with people about Emily Dickinson’s work, how her imaginative take on the world is difficult for some to enter, for many others it is energizing. Stuart Ross has Dickinsonian quirkiness in these poems as he also is a poet who creates poems that project the real world through the lens of his imagination  And Dickinson and Ross train this lens on the big questions of death and immortality. 

So accessible perhaps, quirky definitely. Consider the poem Doxology, which contains the line that provides the title of the book. as a good example of what I am calling quirky. First of all the title means a short hymn of praise to God.  In this poem a fireman swallows a string dropped from a sparrow’s mouth.  An odd subject but the writing comes across as mostly narrative until when he last part of the poem shifts diction, level of quirkiness and elevates to match the title. 

sparrow had said unto him

he remembered the sparrow 

saying they abide and they 

endure carry a piece of their

nest within you don’t fuck

things up like you usually

do like how your wrecked

your family and the fireman

held out his palm and the sun

shone upon it and many

baby birds did there appear. 

Besides the quirky Stuart Ross loves the quotidian and also loves to raise up the poem using it.  For example, buying a suit from a lower end chain of stores called Moores from a guy named Al is the subject of the poem Moore’s. Moores is a well known Canadian chain and most people in Canada know it.  But that doesn’t mean you have to know it to get the poem.  Ross situates the reader immediately and you get to know the store and the merchandise with the entry to the poem 

Al at Moores menswear store in Ajax,

Ontario, is a pretty good guy. Not just

because he found me a nice Italian suit

for $199 ($270 with tax and alterations) 

but because he found me one below my budget

instead of trying upsell me

like the guy in the Cobourg mall. 

But Ross is also situating the reader in a smaller suburban city setting, not the big urban. Dealing with a suburban mall not some high end location. And also warming the reader immediately to Al.  At the same time we are getting a measure of the speaker who is comfortable and looking for a deal, not to be the subject of upselling like that other mall. A lot of background has been provided in a very short space and with a conversational voice that helps warm us to the speaker as he warms us to Al. Ross has us with him. 

Ross goes on to complicate and elevate this daily material.  He mentions “Al looks good in a black suit and not like an undertaker”.  This is the first hint we might be going to be dealing with death.  He then goes on later to compare Al when he chalks the speaker’s sleeve cuff to his own late grandfather. 

marked my sleeve cuff with a sliver

of white chalk just like my grandfather

Sam Blatt, used to do, a tape measure

draped over his shoulder like a tallit. 

Ross conflates for the reader the grandfather  wearing a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, with Al.  And as the poem develops further into this exploration of Ross’ and his grandfather’s history he brings Al in at the end of the poem in an unexpected way.

This suit is for my wedding. I won’t 

need a suit for my funeral. Al will 

wrap me in a plain

white shroud —Tachrichim—

and he’ll suppress the impulse

to find me a matching tie. 

So in the end Al has become someone preparing the body of the speaker for death, despite an earlier assertion that Al was not an undertaker.  This imaginative moment also ends on a note of humour.  What is masterful here is this exploration of death and the dressing for death that just naturally gets inserted. So what starts with what appears to be an everyday description of a retail transaction turns into something much more, a meditation on the images of rituals surrounding the speaker’s death. The poem has taken us a very interesting and surprising ride while luring us in with the everyday. And it is accomplished through the use of humour, engaging language and mashing up of characters and images within a 39 line poem. 

Quirky sure.  Surreal, a touch but not as much as in some other poems. And that is another wonderful thing about this book.  Ross shifts gears often.  Sometimes a surreal poem, sometimes a torqued narrative like Moores, or sometimes an absurdist poem like this short one, August 2008. 

I arrived with a jar of pickles. 

The town was small. 

We sat on your porch. 

We saw a man pursuing the horizon. 

The water in our glasses was crystal. 

You read me a poem by Stephen Crane. 

I read you a poem by Stephen Crane. 

and I said: “Is it good, friend?”

Now this is the strange part:

You leaned toward me

and the sky turned red.  What then?

You don’t have to know that the some lines are taken from Stephen Crane poems. “We saw a man pursuing the horizon” is a reference form Crane’s poem I Saw A Man Pursuing The Horizon, “Is it good, friend” from a somewhat gruesome scene in Crane’s In The Desert , “Now this is the strange part:” from A Man Saw A Ball Of Gold. and “What then?” from LCVI . And Ross doesn’t mention this in the notes to the book, the mention of Crane’s poetry twice in the short poem can be considered sufficient to drive a reader to Google and down a rabbit hole of research into Stephen Crane and his poetry (where I spent last evening).  But it doesn’t matter, the poem works as absurdist work on it’s own, the intertextuality just adds to the effect if you are aware of it. 

It is interesting  to know though that the feel of this poem does echo the tone of the Crane work referenced., short strange free verse poems. Here is one of the referenced Crane poems. 

"I saw a man pursuing the horizon" 

I saw a man pursuing the horizon; 
Round and round they sped. 
I was disturbed at this;   
I accosted the man. 
“It is futile,” I said, 
“You can never —” 

“You lie,” he cried,   
And ran on. 

Ross is using poetry written by a fascinating young man, who died at 28,  described as the foremost American writer of  his time in the 1890’s. Though he is not known as well for his poetry as his prose like The Red Badge Of Courage, his poetry ended up being later recognized as ground breaking for the time and said to establish the foundation for the Imagists that followed years later.  An interesting choice for Ross to focus and this short poem has added depth when the sources are researched.  And like the  other work in this book this nominally accessible work also has surprises.

Stuart Ross brings in other poets and their work routinely throughout the book. And does this in many different ways.  In a title echoing Frank O’Hara with Oh Cy Twombly Please Get Up, direct mentions of the Canadian poet David McFadden and his influence on Ross, Oscar Williams (the famous poetry anthologist) who died in 1964 appearing to young Stuart Ross in 1974 in the very entertaining poem And Oscar Williams Walks In , several poems taking their first line from other poets’s poems.   The purposefulness of referencing others adds to effect of the collection, illustrating the interconnectedness of literature as well as Ross’ own generative processes and influences.  

As to the personal.  While going on some fairly wild flights of imagination Ross also has some very personal work.  It is elegiac and nostalgic.  Accomplished through exploring the death of parents, memories of his grandfather but also through pop culture references from the 1960’s and 1970’s.  You don’t have to know anything about the sixties like the TV show F-Troop to understand and appreciate the poems, but if you happened to grow up at the time you’ll feel the nostalgia come through even more.   And the deep emotions of some poems also are available to readers. Dickinson famously said “Unable are the loved to die for love is immortality”, Stuart gives us that same thing in the very first poem about his mother’s dying. Ross is never overly sentimental but genuine in truthful emotional content. 

I’m a year younger than Ross, grew up close to some of the neighbourhoods he talks about.  The book has a personal appeal for me on that level.  But for other readers the poems will also resonate with skillfully written poetry, literary depth and an adventurous movement through form and subject.  Quirky, personal with just the right amount of accessibility. A great book. 

Editing Over-workshopped Work

So I was looking again at an older poem of mine that I had included in my first draft of my thesis. Matthew liked it but told me it needed to be stranger. This is one of those poems that got worked and worked over the last six years. I had a workshop with Jane Hirshfield a couple of years ago where she said she thought people workshopped too much, that workshopping can "take the finish" off poems, take the shine off them and make them boring. I think that was the case with this one. I went back to a number of versions of the poem looking for the interesting spots I'd taken out and brought them back. I had tried a number of forms in the various versions, what you see in the new version is a mashup of these forms as I brought the older material back in. I decided I found that interesting as it seemed to fit the poem.   I also shifted to first person for more immediacy. Sara also consulted, suggesting the indents used in one section, which for me added a lot, making that material more of an aside and allowing it the different form with the first letter of each line capitalized and no punctuation. Sara also suggested the elements from the Catholic Mass be italicized, another good idea. Below is the new version of the poem followed by the original.

Questions Should Be Asked 

There are words that I keep forgetting

like possum or spoon. Sometimes I feel

them behind other words. There are dark 

shadows under my eyes.

What are those birds?

What is this wilderness?

(my eyes are closed

on the 100D Flemington Park bus)

When I was small I came to this city, the pigeons strutted the sidewalk and short, old Italian men pushed red carts by the museum, roasting chestnuts. My mother bought a small white bag for me, it was warm in my palm as my hand gripped it. There was a burnt aroma as I peeled the brown skin from the hot meat. All the dry leaves blew down the avenue and away into the fall sun that day.

(open my eyes)

A man depends on something

A memory of his father and mother

Or last lover

A small white bag in the open palm of his hand

And then he can go into the world

Where he will learn about winning and failure

One day he is playing with his best friend

In the playground 

And then next thing they know 

They are sitting on a park bench

Looking at the scar that runs through his old-man chest

(this is my stop)

The man busking at Bloor and Avenue Rd.

tells me the angels will dance in the sky the night he dies,

a white pigeon pumpjacks his head  towards the concrete,

I cannot be sure of anything,

maybe it is the way the shadows fall here at dusk,

every day I am filled and then emptied, I can only

hope it starts again. 

A man depends on something,

the memory of his mother or father

or a small white bag in the open palm of his hand.

(This is one of the five places where I sleep at night) 

What I have done, what I have

failed to do, in my thoughts

and in my words.

I woke up one day and knew part of me

had left while I slept.

Questions Should Be Asked

There are words that you keep forgetting

like possum or spoon.

(your eyes are closed

on the 100D Flemington Park bus)

You came to this city when you were small,

pigeons strutted the sidewalk by the museum, 

old Italian men, red push carts roasted chestnuts, 

small white bag, warm in your hands.  Burnt aroma 

when you peeled the brown skin from the hot meat.

(open your eyes)

The old man at Bloor and Avenue Rd

tells you the angels will dance in the sky the night he dies, 

a white pigeon pumpjacks his head  towards the concrete.

You can’t be sure of anything,

maybe it is the way the shadows fall here at dusk,

every day you are filled and then emptied.

A man depends on something,

the memory of his mother or father

or a small white bag in the open palm of his hand.

You woke up one day and knew part of you

had left while you slept.