Tusk-a-Loose'a - Mark Laba (Puddles of Sky Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Tusk-a-loose'a.  Mark Laba.  Puddles of Sky Press.  Kingston, Ontario.  2017.

4

I'd bury the hatchet with anyone

Whether it be in spruce maple pine

Or crime scene tape

On a TV show

Where a guy in a lakeside motel dies

While watching static on a TV screen

Thinking it was messages from

His dead wife

And the hatchet that I'm holding

Is the one that did

The trick.

...

It has finally happened.  

The first perfect poetry book.

Now, it's a short book, a chapbook in fact, but here is why I think Mark Laba's Tusk-a-Loose'a is perfect.

The front cover, perfect.  Simple, visually arresting, pure and twisted.

Inside.  Every single poem worked, pulled their weight.  Got the job done.  It was marvelous.  When I'm reading poetry for Today's book of poetry I usually write down page numbers of poems I particularly like and want to use for the blog but with Tusk-a-Loose'a I enjoyed the first poem, and then the second and then the third and then the fourth, and so on.  It was sweep, a perfect game, the opposite of a no-hitter but more rare.  

Today's book of poetry didn't have to write down a thing because every poem blasted past with the same high-tone velocity, we wanted to share every damned one.

Mark Laba has been around since we first discovered snow, but I've never met the man.  More's the pity.  Laba has endless wit, he knows exactly how close to the edge to take his reader - before pushing them over.

1

Asphalt opens

To the arteries of trees beneath

Scrabbing across shadow-strewn and rain-sodden streets

Where raccoons occasionally cross

To wash

The severed heads of their little squirrel victims

And encase them in plexiglass displays

They stole from the hobby shop.

...

It is hard to imagine doing more with any less.  Laba throws the reader around like a rag doll, not so much misdirection as vibrant lead step in a dance duo.  Mark Laba reads like Stephen Wright and Saint Nelson of Ball had a child with a young Raymond Souster, before the banks got him.  Laba is like that wisecracking kid at the back of the classrooms of our youth, the one that always had the right thing to say and was willing to say it at the wrong time.

Today's book of poetry had Milo, our head tech, check out the stacks to see what he could find from Mark Laba.  Our pickings were unfortunately slim with only Movies in the Insect Temple (Proper Tales Press, 1981) and The Thing In Exile which was co-authored with Steven Feldman and Stuart Ross (Books By Kids, 1975).  After reading Tusk-a-Loose'a Today's book of poetry will be on the hunt more of anything by Mark Laba.  It turns out he may be the best poet in Canada you've never heard of.

8

Lately I've thought about the narwhal tusk

As a navigation device for my mini-van

A way to breeze along through the bi-ways and highways

Of a nation I just invented that I call well I forget

What I called it

But you can bet your bottom dollar

It was one hell'uva nation

Before it sank into the ocean

Which wasn't my fault

As I was at the orthodontist

And my second-in-command

Was crushed under an avalanche

Of packing peanuts.

...

Mark Laba writes like a wise hipster Yoda.  "Good poems, you must."  This little chapbook punches way above its weight.

Our morning read was hillll-lair-eeeeeeeeee-ous.  These poems snapped around the room like the flick of a wet towel in a happy locker room.  The energy went around the room as though we had all had our fingers in the same poetry socket.

Today's book of poetry is here to tell you that Mark Laba is a poetry time bomb, and Tusk-a-Loose'a is one of those marvels that makes you happy to have it in your hands.

6

You can only Doppler your way

Out of so many situations like

Judging dog shows or liquefying things for future museums

But as the echo recedes

So does your memory

Until soon you're that old guy in the wheelchair at the beach

With a blanket over his legs

Yelling at the seagulls to stop crapping on his toupee.

...

Only flaw in Mark Laba's perfect Tusk-a-Loose'a is that we wanted more of it.

Mark Laba

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Laba lives in Vancouver where he once talked his way into being a restaurant reviewer for a  Vancouver newspaper, but it ruined his appetite. He's been writing for a long time, although he takes breaks occasionally to indulge in his twin-passions for ventriloquism and cephalopod massage therapy. If you need to speak with him he's usually behind the cardboard baling machine in the Safeway shipping dock at 41st and Cambie on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10am until 1pm. Otherwise he devotes his time to a discarded sofa-bed rescue centre.

puddlesofskypress.com

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration

A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent - Stuart Ross (A Buckrider Book/Wolsak and Wynn)

Today's book of poetry:
A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent.  Stuart Ross.
A Buckrider Book.  Wolsak and Wynn.  Hamilton, Ontario.  2016.

These are my words.

                                                                 They existed before I was born

                                                                  but not in this order.

                                                                                       David W. McFadden

                                                                                       "My Words/Hamilton"

Those of you who read Today's book of poetry with any regularity will already know that Stuart Ross and I are the closest of friends.  We've been friends since before most of you were born.

So please take that into consideration.

Now please forget what I just told you -- so that I can categorically tell you without pretense or prejudice, how truly splendid a pleasure bomb Stuart Ross has bestowed on us with A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent.

For many of us Stuart Ross has been the most original and imaginative voice in Canadian poetry for some time.  His wit and ironic palette are second to none.  And now he's gone and done it, Ross has added two new twists to his considerable canon.  Access to his massive and generous heart and a concerted effort to tie into a more direct narrative.

The results are stunning.  Today's book of poetry is convinced A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent is not only Ross' best book, and that is saying something, but one of the very best I have read in years.

Pompano

And my mother is on the balcony

and my father is making cheese sandwiches

and my mother is writing a letter

that my father will discover

two months later in their bedroom

in Toronto, the morning

we're to bury her

she writes that

she is on the balcony

and he is making cheese sandwiches

and she says she feels treasured

and if ever there are grandkids

tell them she'd've loved them

and in five years my brother

dies in my sobbing father's arms

and my father one year after

and I cannot find the letter

my mother wrote in Pompano

but I remember the word treasured

it's how she felt, she said

     and palm trees sway in the hot breeze

     and butterflies called daggerwings drift past

     and sand skinks swim through millions of grains of sand

     and I - I am a pompano

     I am this fish and I search

     for that letter in my mother's hand

     beyond the Atlantic coast

...

Make no mistakes, this is still a Stuart Ross book full of unexpected magic and rubix cube logic leaps of faith.  There are poems Today's book of poetry see as political and powerful and brilliant beside intensely personal laments of grief and quiet moments of joyous relief and celebration.  Ross has it all packed in here.

Today's book of poetry sees A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent as far more deeply personally revealing than any of Ross' previous work, there are poems about all of Ross' family, the living and the dead, and a tenderness that will shake your opened heart.  And there are also the usual myriad of resplendent guests popping out of Ross' generous compendium like popcorn.

Virginia Woolf, David W. McFadden, Ron Padgett, Stephen Crane, Boris Spassky, Mark Laba and his entire family, Kurosawa and Dagwood Bumstead too, they are all in here and that is just scratching the surface.

Mentioning Sir David W. of McFadden makes Today's book of poetry think that A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent started one afternoon forty years ago or so when Ross skipped school, spent the afternoon in a library and discovered SAINT DAVID M and A Knight in Dried Plums.

Make Big Monkey Writing Poems

Big Monkey watches over me

as the blistering clouds bang

against my window and I dream

of you again and you are alive.

We are in a snow fort on my lawn

on Pannahill Road and we pretend

we are soaring through space.

The rumble of a 1967 Valiant

station wagon passing by

my driveway is the roar

of a meteor hurtling toward

earth and narrowly missing our

craft. We know now that

everyone will die except us,

because we are in space. Except

our ship has turned into a womb,

its hot, sticky walls pressing

against us until we can barely

move our arms. We are crushed

together like conjoined twins,

and because you are dead, I 

wonder if I too am now dead

and I call out to Big Monkey

but he is bent over my desk,

rolling a sheet of yellow paper

through the platen of my

1952 Underwood, so intent

he cannot see us in the TV set,

our palms against the screen

from inside, and vertical hold

starts slipping.

...

This morning's reading of A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent in the Today's book of poetry offices was fire-cracking-tear-jerking-awe inspiring-explosion stuff.  About a dozen guests piled through the doors first thing this morning.  Both Milo, our head tech, and Kathryn, our new Jr. Editor, invited friends and family because they both adore Mr. Ross.  They have collected almost everything of the mountain he has published.  The reading was a dazzle as people took turns flashing it all out into the open like fireworks.  There was real snap, crackle and pop.

Stuart Ross has done something marvelous in this astonishing book by giving us almost full access.   Today's book of poetry is enthused by Aaron Tucker's suggestion that this become a poetry franchise, Tucker suggests A Sparrow Still Come Down Resplendent, Keepin it Resplendent, The Sparrow Re-Returns and so on.  We love this idea.  Ross' fertile home planet has sent us a gem.

The Hanging

My grandfather yells his Polish English

as my pyjama top swings

from the banister above

and his sewing machine

is silent in his dark room

and my mother puts her hand

on the back of my head,

tells me, "He saw the pyjama

and thought it was you,

that you had hanged yourself,"

and I went to my room,

gazed out at the snow

blanketing the Nefskys' roof

and pictured myself hanging

my pyjama sleeve tight

around my throat,

my grandfather pushing my feet aside

as he lumbers up the stairs

to eat his lumpy porridge.

...

Today's book of poetry loves the three poems I selected for today but there is so much more going on in A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent.

Today's book of poetry rarely makes requests but we are making one today, a social experiment if you will.  Today's book of poetry would like each of you readers to repost this blog today, just flip that sucker over.  Why?  Because Stuart Ross is an unsung Canadian marvel as rare as hen's teeth, because Stuart Ross, in A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent has exposed an emotional bridge into Ross world that allows the reader to walk in with ease, once there the dancing starts.

I love Stuart Ross like a brother and have admired both him and his work all these long years.  When you read A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent you are going to want to join my club.

Stuart Ross

Photo:  Laurie Siblock

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stuart Ross is the author of fifteen books of fiction, poetry and essays. His many dozens of chapbooks include Nice Haircut, Fiddlehead(Puddles of Sky Press); A Pretty Good Year (Nose in Book Publishing) and In In My Dream (BookThug). Stuart is a member of the improvisational noise trio Donkey Lopez, whose CDs include Juan Lonely Night and Working Class Burro. He is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective and has his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Mansfield Press. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, and blogs at bloggamooga.blogspot.ca.

BLURBS

"Stuart Ross uses humour as a subversive weapon."

     - Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star

"Ross's book is, among other things, a quite polemic in defense of the miscellaneous, swimming againt the stream and against streamlining."

     - Alessandro Porco, Northern Poetry Review

"What I personally found myself most drawn to, however, were the poems (and there are many) where the imagistic bravado and willingness to play are married to a deep sense of martality and quiet grace.  It takes a special sort of poet to make a reader feel profound empathy for the shattered dreams of a young hamburger, as he does...I Cut My Finger is a strange, beguilling and beautiful book."

     - Nick Thran, Poetryreviews.ca

Stuart Ross

Reads three Cobourg Poems

Video:  Wally Keeler

wolsakandwynn.ca

475

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.