Wherever We Mean To Be / Selected Poems 1975 - 2015 - Robyn Sarah (Biblioasis

Today's book of poetry:
Wherever We Mean To Be / Selected Poems 1975 - 2015.  Robyn Sarah.  Biblioasis.  Windsor, Ontario.  2017.

Shadowplay  -  1978  -  (Fiddlehead Books)

The Space Between Sleep and Waking  -  1981  -  (Villenuve)

Anyone Skating On That Middle Ground  -  1984  (Vehicule Press)

Becoming Light  - 1987  -  (Cormorant Books)

The Touchstone: Poems New and Selected  -  1992  -  (House of Anansi)

Questions About The Stars  -  1998  (Brick Books)

A Day's Grace  -  2003  (Porcupine's Quill)

Pause For Breath  -  2009  -  (Biblioasis)

Digressions: Prose Poems, Collage Poems, and Sketches  -  2012  (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

My Shoes Are Killing Me  -  2015  (Biblioasis)

Two things. 

First thing:

Any poet in Canada would kill to have Robyn Sarah's list of publishers behind their names.  Okay, I wouldn't kill, but I might maim.  

Second thing:

The K seal of approval will start this production.  As I sometimes do, I read some poems to K last night after we'd retired to our reading stations in bed.  I read K Robyn Sarah poems.  The first clue was that K didn't say stop.  K loves poetry, but she doesn't love it all.  Robyn Sarah passed the very difficult K standard with flying colours. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise, Robyn Sarah has been writing about those moments that make up a life, a relationship, a childhood, with candor and a firm tenderness since she first crossed Today's book of poetry radar back in the late seventies.  

There are no strange animals in Sarah's poetry forest, but you'll recognize the beasts and the fauna.  

Broom at Twilight

Some climbs end nowhere.  Like the unplanned climb

I took this evening.

                               I'd gone down the beach

some little way, and though the sun was low,

I thought that it would see me round those rocks

to the next cove, with time enough to watch

the tide come in (and maybe make it back

without getting my feet wet.)

                                              No such luck —

beyond that stretch, the tide was in already,

and there was nothing to do but climb the cliffs

up to the road, and walk back home that way.

Dark doesn't wait, this time of year.  I climbed,

and the sun went down as I went up.  Went right on

falling beyond the unseen edge faster

than I could find my holds.  (Footholds in clay,

handholds on anchored roots.  And all the while

the sky fast darkening out from above.)

                                                               Near water,

the grey hour's luminous.  And by the beach

I should have had no trouble finding my way.

Where I came up, though—something blocked the light.

It was the sameness that surprised me.

                                                              Broom:

a forest of it.  Higher than my head.

And not in clumps, the way it seems to grow

by day—but in a sold wall.  An army

bristling with strange intent.  The broom I knew

grew in tall waving tufts like uncut hay

to wade through at high noon.  This broom stood up

like earth's raised hackles in the failing light —

a massing of ominous spikes against the sky

and stems that wouldn't give way.  I couldn't find

the mouse-paths children make to get to the sea—

but had to plunge (broom closing over me)

into a tangible edgeless element,

banking on where I thought the road must be.

...

Today's book of poetry thinks that "Broom at Twilight" would safely pass as the life story of most of us.  The best laid plans leading to an ominous turn of events, none the less we plunge ahead with hope.  

In Robyn Sarah's Wherever We Mean To Be /  Selected Poems 1975 - 2015, Sarah understands that the dramas in our small lives are our operas, our movies, the real played out screenplays of our lives.  The choices we make depending upon where our hearts and our heart's commitments reside.  In her poem "Riveted," Sarah makes her mission statement clear:

                                             "—riveted, as it were;

      spellbound by our own imperfect lives

      because they are lives,

      and because they are ours."

Today's book of poetry is a little muddle today for a variety of reasons.  Almost all of them good ones.  Our hero/mentor/buddy Stuart Ross has taken up residence in the Today's book of poetry guest room.  It should have his name on it.  Yesterday Today's book of poetry got a package in the mail from our St. Louis correspondent David Clewell.  Campbell McGrath and David Hilton arrived in such bounty that we are blushing.  

Today's book of poetry is also rushing a little.  K and I are heading to Peterborough in a few minutes to see some family and look after some business, maybe have a northern route road trip on the way back tomorrow.  It is always good to see family and we will both see our sisters and that's just about the best trip you can take.

Looking forward to seeing family and thinking about my friendships with Stuart Ross and David Clewell make me all poetry sentimental and now I want to throwout my Robyn Sarah notes and tell you that Today's book of poetry was compelled to write about Wherever We Mean To Be.  

***

A few days have passed.  We looked after our Peterborough business and made it back to Ottawa.  Stuart Ross has left but we are expecting a visit from Larry Cowan today.  Today's book of poetry and Mr. Cowan have never met in person so we are excited about that.  Mr. Cowan's Monk Press is going to do a chapbook for us in the not too distant future.

Sarah's poems have been swirling around in my head for the last week.  Usually Today's book of poetry is on to the next thing, the next poet, the next blog.  Robyn Sarah has lingered like a much welcomed house guest.

Once Desire

Once, desire was a soft roaring
between us, like white water,
and we adjusted our voices
to be heard above it
till it seemed to us
that we whispered: as any sound,
heard long enough, becomes silence.

I would like to go back to that time,
when the power was still outside of us
and we were as if asleep, cocooned
in the white rush of it.  Unharmed
and unarmed.  When we were a
dream of wings.  Before this
perilous flying.

...

Our morning read was orchestrated by our new intern, Maggie, and she did a splendid job.  Maggie could have been a conductor for music or for a train, she's a talented young woman.  Maggie assigned each of us particular poems, using Maggie logic, and it seemed to work out just fine.

Robyn Sarah had a great deal to do with that.  Sarah, much to my great delight, doesn't build any walls around her poems, they are all the same, they all pull you into her narrative as though you'd been there all along.  Robyn Sarah writes solid poems that you can depend on.

Stormblue

     "You're rich, and you want to be loved like a poor man."
                    —Les enfants du paradis

The way a woman loves a man
without money: for the holes
in his socks, for the tilt
of his eyebrows, for his voice
singing a song or murmuring
behind a door, for the fragrant
smoke of his pipe bluing the air
in the small old cozy cluttered room,
for his patched elbows, his
tweedy jackets from the Nearly New,
for the blind intelligence
of his body in love, for his hands,
quiet on the table, their dance
in the air when he speaks,
for the mole
on the back of his neck, for a few
old jokes that he likes to tell,
for his laugh,
for the way his hair sticks up
in the morning, for the cleft
in his chin, for a dimple
(seldom seen) in his left cheek,
for his dreams, and the light
that they put in his eyes
evenings of dreamy talk—

For the blue of his eyes
that she calls
his baby eyes
that grow stormblue
in anger at being loved
for the foolish things
she loves him for,
because they are all he has
to give her,
because he knows
that she knows
he will never
have more.

...

Today's book of poetry has been reading Dame Robyn Sarah since the late 70s and almost always with a hint of jealousy.   It takes a lot of polished brass to hit the mark and keep on hitting it.  Sarah has been consistent all these years.  Wherever We Mean To Be is a beautiful comfort and Robyn Sarah remains a clear investment.

Spending time with Robyn Sarah's Wherever We Mean To Be will be poetry time well spent.

Robyn Sarah

ABOUT THE AUTHOR    
Robyn Sarah is the author of eight poetry collections, two collections of short stories, and a book of essays on poetry. Her most recent poetry collection is Pause for Breath (Biblioasis, 2009). Le tamis des jours, selected poems in French translation with parallel English text, was published in 2007, as was Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry. Her writing has appeared widely in Canada and the United States, and her poems have been anthologized in Fifteen Canadian Poets x 2 and x 3, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Norton Anthology of Poetry and in Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times. She lives in Montréal.

BLURBS
“A poem by Sarah could fit into the palm of your hand … Wherever We Mean To Be showcases [her] gifts: her visual clarity, no-nonsense voice, compressed language, rhythmic prowess, and metaphoric agility. These qualities speak from a long-cultivated focus and bespeak a writer who pays fierce attention to the basic fact of being in the world.” —Anita Lahey, The Walrus

“This city, read by a kind of hidden code, seems lost in time; lives lived in its outmoded rooms have a timeless quality…the voice remains utterly its own, in pursuit of what Sarah calls “the lost soundtrack of daily life.” —Canadian Jewish News

Robyn Sarah reads from Questions About The Stars (Brick Books)

Video:  Brick Books

biblioasis.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

Pockets - Stuart Ross (ECW Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Pockets.  Stuart Ross.  ECW Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2017.

Anyone who has read Today's book of poetry knows about Stuart Ross.  

But just so we are clear from the beginning Today's book of poetry loves Stuart Ross as though he were my brother.  Stuart edited my last book, Bad Engine, and I sincerely hope he edits my next book, Low Centre of Gravity.  I love Mr. Ross enough that K and I have named our guest room The Stuart Ross Room.  Just last year Stuart Ross's A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent won the 4th annual prestigious Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize sponsored by Today's book of poetry.

You can see that here:   

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2016/05/a-sparrow-came-down-resplendent-stuart.html

Today's book of poetry will go you one further, Mr. Ross will be spending a couple of nights here, at the Today's book of poetry headquarters, next week.  All of this lead just to be clear of the road we're plowing, Today's book of poetry remains convinced that Stuart Ross, inspite of being my buddy, is one of Canada's very best writers.

Pockets, the most recent Stuart Ross publication is ostensibly a novel.  But it is a novel constructed of short prose poems.  That's where we come in.  And as much as Pockets holds it narrative these short prose poems have no trouble standing on their own.  Ross mines some familiar territory in Pockets visiting family terrain and his brother in the clouds.

Mayakovsky had his "Cloud in Trousers" and Mayakovsky might not be a bad, but brief, comparison to our surrealist inspired Ross.  The language Ross employs in Pockets results in his most accessible work to date.  Ross is only a few generations away from being a beautifully sad Russian himself.  And make no mistake, even when Ross is punching out prose he remains a poet at heart.  And I always remembered Mayakovsky's 'Trousers' as red.

。。。

                   As I sat cross-legged on the floor on my parents'

                   bedroom at lunchtime watching The Flintstones on

                   television, I felt a tickle on the knuckles of my right

                   hand. It was a daddy-long-legs. Or maybe it was the

                   1955 movie Daddy Long Legs, starring Fred Astaire

                   as Jervis Pendleton III and Leslie Caron as Julie

                   Andre. Whichever it was, it scurried across the back

                   of my hand and vanished.

。。。

This book recycles the dreams and the horrors of childhood through the challenging lens of a beautifully fractured memory.  Wherever there is a broken seam Ross applies his masterful Kintsugi thinking.

。。。

                  I pedalled my new red bicycle to the end of the

                  block. I looked back at our house. My brother stood

                  at the foot of the driveway watching me. He wore

                  a white T-shirt and blue jeans. I was not allowed to

                  ride any farther than the stop sign. I looked at the

                  grey-and-yellow triplexes a block away. Marky lived

                  in one. I rode past the stop sign and up, up, toward

                  the triplexes. I wobbled from side to side on my red

                  bicycle. My brother snitched. The slam of my father's

                  footsteps as he strode after me along Pannahill Road

                  was like a series of meteors hitting the earth. I stood

                  with Marky looking at my new bicycle, and soon my

                  father's shadow fell over us. His large thumb came

                  down and squashed me into the concrete. Marky

                  examined the smudge on the driveway in front of the

                  triplex he lived in.

。。。

These untitled micro-chapters fit together like Lego blocks built by William S. Bourroughs and his wild Brion Gysin friend.  Stuart Ross simply never fails to delight, surprise and inform as he entertains.  There are more nods of agreement inside your own head when reading the mysterio Stuart Ross than you generally have any right to expect.  Especially considering that Ross is most likely going to take you out of your range of reason and then back in before you can blink.

Today's book of poetry doesn't really know any other poets like Stuart Ross.  But if you were to take Kurt Vonnegut's imagination, a Garrison Keillor sense of the storyteller and candy twisted it all together with a generous dose of wit and wisdom from Randy Newman and his melodious lamentations, you would be nearing the mark.

。。。

                   The girl next door had never heard of the Beatles. I

                   laughed. She laughed, too. Her name was Karen. She

                   showed me her Cowsills comic book, and her mother

                   gave us peanut-butter sandwiches and milk in glasses

                   that had once held yahrzeit candles. I looked out their

                   kitchen window and saw my own house. My grand-

                   father was standing on the roof beside his treadle-

                   operated sewing machine. He was born in Poland,

                   and he clenched a piece of thread between his teeth.

。。。

                   Spools of black, brown, and grey thread emerged

                   from the clouds, unravelling as they sailed down

                   toward earth. Earth, meanwhile, braced itself.

。。。

Today's book of poetry is not alone in our admiration of Mr. Stuart Ross.  As a regular guest of Today's book of poetry all of our staff are quite familiar with Stuart and his work.  They also see his name in book after book after book of Canadian poetry -- as editor, mentor or simply being thanked for his friendship. Ross ushers more books of poetry into print, for a wide variety of presses, than Gutenberg ever dreamed.

Even though Pockets is a novel you can carry in your pocket, Today's book of poetry treated it like a series of cleverly connected and paced prose poems.  Our morning read was a non-stop start-to-finish roller coaster as the staff connected the dots and the chapters.  It was an excellent reading.

But in truth there is nothing like the real thing.  Stuart Ross remains one of the best live poetry acts in the country.  Today's book of poetry has been to more poetry readings than you think possible and still thinks Ross is the best.  Of course Ross has great ammunition.  He has a canon of fine books but the reality is that he is getting better with age.  Ross has been adding an emotional elements to his work that has made it more directly accessible to every reader.  

。。。

                  My mother told me the large tree in our backyard

                  was called a "weeping willow." It drooped toward

                  the lawn like it was sad. It was sad because the presi-

                  dent got shot in the head.

。。。

                  I stood at my bedroom window, looking out into the

                  stars and at the moon, so small, drifting aross the

                  black sky. The house was silent. My room was dark.

                  My pyjamas were covered in squirrels. The thing I

                  thought was the moon was not the moon, after all. It

                  was a snow fort. I huddled inside it, chewing ice.

。。。

Pockets will garner more attention than Today's book of poetry can give it.  But we will be able to say to many of you that you saw it here first.  Stuart Ross writes with such authority that his whimsy always leads the reader in the right direction.  His startling revelations and discoveries become a baseline for an entirely new sensation of reason.

Today's book of poetry loves this work.

Stuart Ross

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stuart Ross is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, editor, and creative-writing instructor.

Ross was born in Toronto's north end in 1959 and grew up in the Borough of North York. He began writing at a very young age and was first published at age 16 by Books by Kids (now Annick Press). This book, The Thing in Exile, also contained work by teen writers Steven Feldman and Mark Laba. Ross attended Alternative Independent Study Program for high school. He went on to self-publish dozens of books and chapbooks through his Proper Tales Press imprint. As his books began to emerge from larger literary publishing houses, he has continued his Proper Tales Press project.

Ross has been active in the Toronto literary scene since the mid-1970s. He is co-founder, with Nicholas Power, of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair, which has been operating since 1987 under various directorships. This fair, the first of its kind in Canada, inspired similar events in Vancouver, Ottawa, and Hamilton. Ross is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, which formed in 2006 to promote small-press publishing in the Toronto area.

He was the 2002 "Writer in Residence" for the Writers' Circle of Durham Region, the 2003 "Poet in Residence" for the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and the 2005 Electronic Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library's RAMP website for teens. He was Queen's University's writer in residence in 2010.[1] Stuart was the Fiction and Poetry Editor for This Magazine from 2004 until 2012 and from 2007 to 2016, he was Editor for Mansfield Press, where he had his own imprint: "a stuart ross book."[2] In 2017, Ross launched a new imprint for surrealist poetry – A Feed Dog Book – through Anvil Press.

His own magazines have included Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Reviews (later subtitled A Journal of Small Press Stuff), Peter O'Toole (a magazine of one-line poems), Dwarf Puppets on Parade (a magazine of writing with restrictions), Who Torched Rancho Diablo? (poetry and fiction), Syd & Shirley, a magazine of Canadian and American poetry, and HARDSCRABBLE, a poetry magazine.

Although primarily known as a poet, Ross has also published fiction and personal essays. His column "Hunkamooga" appeared in Word: Toronto's Literary Calendar from 2001 to 2005, and moved to the Vancouver-based literary magazine sub-Terrain in 2006, where it ran until 2012.

As an editor, Ross was responsible for the 2004 anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence. In 2003, he issued the chapbook anthology My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush. In 2007, Ross was the editor for the Insomniac Press book Why Are You So Sad? Selected Poems of David W. McFadden, and in 2010 for the Insomniac Press book Why Are You So Long and Sweet? Collected Long Poems of David McFadden. With Stephen Brockwell, he is the editor of the Mansfield Press poetry anthology Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament.

His 2009 short-story collection, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, was shortlisted for the Alberta Readers' Choice Award and the Alberta Book Awards, and won the 2010 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. In 2012, he co-won the Elaine Mona Adilman Award for English Fiction & Poetry on a Jewish Theme, awarded by the J.I. Segal Committee of the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, for his novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. In spring 2013, Ross's poetry collection You Exist. Details Follow. won the Exist Through The Gift Shop Award, the only prize given to an anglophone writer that year by the Montreal-based group l'Académie de la vie littéraire au tournant du 21e siècle. In fall 2017, Stuart's poetry collection A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award in the poetry category.

PLEASE NOT THAT THIS BIOGRAPHY WAS TAKEN IN ITS ENTIRETY FROM WIKIPEDIA

BLURBS

“Each brief page of this brief, surrealistic novel brims with the unexpected, the astonishing, the odd . . . Pockets is a beautiful little book.” 

     – The Murdock

Stuart Ross

Reads 3 Razovsky poems

Video: farmergloomy

ecwpress.com

647

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.