18 Goddamn Centos - Stuart Ross

Today's book of poetry:  18 Goddamn Centos.  Stuart Ross.  Proper Tales Press.  Cobourg, Ontario.  2013.

I should start with a disclaimer but if you have been paying attention to this blog you will already know I am a huge fan of the endless fascinating poetry of Stuart Ross.  18 Goddamn Centos is but the latest of a myriad of chapbooks Ross has published over the years.

Ross is as well connected as any poet in the country, he knows poets and he knows poetry.  But when I say connected I mean to the inner thoughts of us all.  In 18 Goddamn Centos he makes elastic use out of the voices of others yet speaks clearly in that Stuart Rossian timbre we've come to recognize and embrace.

Cento is a form that borrows individual lines from other other poets to create a new poem - think of it as an elaborate rag quilt.

Cento For Alfred Purdy

He begins to speak

like a small storm cloud

and hills under our feet tremble,

and a small rain like tears

from the hot fields

under a million merciless suns

reach across the distance of night

Years later at Ameliasburg

I remembered that blind dog

under a faithless moon —

it was a heart-warming moment for Literature

— a thud and a cry

love and hate

doing pushups under an ancient Pontiac

Five minutes ago I was young, five minutes ago

we were very happy

but my hate was holy as kosher foreskins then

and the quick are dead and the dead grow hands

fingers like fireflies on the typewriter

suspended between stars

in an imaginary town

I knew a guy once would buy a single drop

of the rain and mists of Baffin

as if a child had clasped his hands

into the tips of falling leaves

I've seen these trees spilling down mountains

inside the brain's small country:

light comes and goes from a ghostly sun

on both sides of the swan

but first they cut off his fingers

beside my crumbling little house

standing in a patch of snow

in the silvery guts of a labouring terribly useful lifetime

...

This is an astonishing feat of engineering.  This particular strong, evocative poem is made up entirely of lines from Al Purdy poems.  Clearly Stuart Ross is reading everything.  "Cento For Alfred Purdy" is a beautiful elegy and a snappy poem.  Ross's choice of material, the stuff he recycles from the poems of others — is so ventriloquist right on the mark that it sounds like it is coming from his mouth.

Ross has numerous books and chapbooks to his credit, most recently Our Days In Vaudeville (Mansfield Press), which is another collaborative venture.  Ross has been nominated for numerous literary prizes and awards but remains one of Canada's biggest literary secrets.

Embassy Sonnet: A Cento

Ask me something; come on; questions!

If I were Nancy Drew, I could tap my way

among the gods

gobbled by snores to the stately

snails supposedly accompanied by focaccia

I used to play

cowboys in sweat pants and Nikes

What did I learn about my kinfolk?

the world is the decay of the world

the air is some torn-up paper, floating.

And so I plan to go to the Canadian Embassy

As a small south american squirrel

The guy who cut off my head

he used to have five sisters

...

This Proper Tales Press chapbook has all of the light-hearted humour, a hint of dark menace lurking underneath, the keen observational jigsaw solving and other fine skills that Ross always brings to the dance.  18 Goddamn Centos is a typical Stuart Ross book.

Excellent.

Stuart Ross Poetry Rocks

Don't Step on Ants - Stuart Ross

Proper Tales Press