CBC BOOKS' "CANADIAN POETRY COLLECTIONS TO WATCH FOR IN FALL 2024"
Imagining a vast blue expanse of what a poem might be
The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is a laboratory of poetic approaches and experiments. It mines the personal and imaginary lives of Stuart Ross and portraits of his grief and internal torment, while paying homage to many of the poet’s literary heroes. It contains new entries in Ross’s ongoing Razovsky poems, prose poems, a remix of an entire poetry book by dear friend Nelson Ball, a couple of collaborative poems, some one-line poems, and lots more. In an era of thematic poetry and conceptual poetry books, this collection is a celebration of possibilities and miscellany.
"Stuart Ross doesn’t hold back, happily for us. In letting his poems go where they want to go, sometimes by leaps and bounds, he reminds us that poetic rules are meant to be broken and that the results, in the hands of a skillful poet, can be moving, or amusing, or subversive, or exhilarating, or all of the above. His work brims with surprises. From start to finish, The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky is a delightful and thoroughly engaging book." – Charles North, author of News, Poetry and Poplars: Poems/Selected Prose
"Here, we’re invited to gawk at horror and kick it in the pants, but also to notice the horror within us, because we all have it, and Ross doesn’t shy away from the odd and uncomfortable. He’s easy with sentiment, honest about grief, clear about death being our final destination, and behooves us mightily to enjoy it while we can. This book contains some of Ross’s greatest love songs for the dead as well as some sideways laments for the living – in these poems we can see ourselves and our friendships, our future losses, and present mysteries examined with no preference or perfunctory reverence. Each time I read Stuart Ross’s work I feel grateful, hopeful, reminded to lift my skeleton up and enjoy the abundant wonders the world holds." – Gillian Wigmore, author of Orient
"Stuart Ross is one of the most important poets to have found himself somehow on planet Earth, where readers have been rejoicing in his work for nearly six decades. He makes it seem easy: open your eyes, your ears, your heart; look into the world and write. However, to do so with such unflinching candour, many-layered humour, the deepest emotional intelligence, and rarest lyric acumen? No, you have to be Stuart Ross to bring all of everything to bear upon being alive in one’s time. To rejoice is also to mourn, of course, and these poems are afraid to do neither. Ross trusts poetry more than any of us, so poetry trusts him back: this book dazzles the very sunlight with what it knows, including of the estrangements of the self upon which poetry so often insists, and the fictitiousness of borders between the present and the past, dream and not-dream, hilarity and grief. Whoever you are, including the laws of physics, you will be startled and moved by The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky. At times a momentarily posthumous point of view propels the poems, but do not grieve (or do): the book is immortal." – Lisa Fishman, author of Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition
Authors
Related Organizations
- Pages
- 128
- Published in
- Canada
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title 5
- Copyright 6
- Dedication 6
- Contents 8
- I: The Sky 15
- I Love Poetry 17
- Last Poem 18
- The Rest of the Day of Rest 20
- Alternating Leg Motion 21
- Hibernation 23
- Poem at Sixty-One 24
- Education 25
- Film Festival 26
- Hans Arp & Other Mae tt rs 27
- The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky 28
- Fireball XL5 Aubade 30
- Valediction 31
- Bouncing Ball 32
- Various Words by Stephen Brockwell Plus Some Other Words 33
- Razovsky on the Volga 34
- 25 July 2020 35
- Paris 36
- The Air, the Sky 37
- New Year’s Eve, 2022 38
- Life Begins When You Begin the Beguine 40
- II: Is A Sky 41
- Bird Snow on Hard Tracks 43
- Racter in the Forest 49
- Tales of Flisk, #18 51
- The Anglo-Saxons. Take Nine 54
- Razovsky Has Something to Say 55
- Opening Night 57
- Willow Street 58
- Bill Got Pissed 59
- Blatt 60
- Bloom 61
- Math & Science 62
- Tiny Creatures 64
- The Mist 65
- A Toy Bird (with Clare Shaw) 67
- Sufficient Evidence, Opus 19 69
- Self-Portrait 70
- Resurrection 72
- Poem for Sunday (January 1, 2023) 73
- One Day in 2023 75
- List&Ning 76
- III: In The Sky 79
- The Breathtaking Arrival of Kay Francis into My Life 81
- Poem for Catrina Longmuir 84
- My Ideas, My Floor, My Mother 85
- Memo 87
- Six Hours 88
- May 14, 1980 (Río Sumpul) 89
- Jenny Holzer 90
- Wiseberg Plays with Her Grandsons 91
- Michael’s Office 93
- Chicago 94
- Propofol 95
- Taffy and Clytemnestra ( with Sarah Burgoyne) 96
- The Dot Was Red 98
- Ten 100
- Itinerary 103
- Can’t Explain Poem 105
- And Thus Shall It Unfold 106
- Cookery 107
- Tea Time 108
- Razovsky in Paradise 109
- Song 111
- I Wasn’t Really Prepared for Any of This 112
- Seven Sleeps for a New Year 113
- Poem 116
- Notes 119
- Acknowledgements 123
- About the Author 127
