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Sparrow Came Down Resplendent, A
Elegiac, bittersweet and generous of spirit – a major poet’s most beautiful work to date. Always willing to take aesthetic and artistic risks, Stuart Ross is the author of some of Canada’s most daring, and also most rewarding, poetry. Long celebrated for his surreal narratives and humorous wordplay, here Ross focuses more intensely on intimate subject matter – investigating the often complex, often absurd, but always powerful connections between loved ones. The care and delicacy with which he renders these portraits of family members, friends, mentors – and even himself – is nothing short of arresting. And readers – both those familiar with his work and those new to it – will admire the dexterity with which he juxtaposes such pieces with more audacious inventions.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2016
244 people want to read
About the author
Stuart Ross
38 books122 followersStuart 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: Buy My Books,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks.
A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective. He had his own imprint, a stuart ross book, at Mansfield Press for a decade, and was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine for eight years. In fall 2017, he launched a new poetry imprint, A Feed Dog Book, through Anvil Press.
Stuart has edited several small literary magazines, including Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Stuff, Syd & Shirley, Who Torched Rancho Diablo?, Peter O’Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems, and, most recently HARDSCRABBLE.
He is the author of two collaborative novels, two solo novels, two collections of stories, and twelve full-length poetry books. He has also published two collections of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer and Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (both from Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press) and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press).
Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada and works one-on-one with authors on their manuscripts. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario. In spring 2009, Freehand Books released his first short-story collection in more than a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, to almost unanimous critical acclaim.
Stuart was the fall 2010 writer-in-residence at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and the winter 2021 writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa.
In 2017, Stuart won the eighth annual Battle of the Bards, presented by the International Festival of Authors and NOW Magazine. In spring 2023, Stuart received the biggest book award in Ontario, the Trillium Book Prize, for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers. In fall 2019, Stuart was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature and literary community. His other awards include the Canadian Jewish Literary Prize for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His work has been translated into Russian, French, Spanish, Estonian, Slovene, and Nynorsk.
Stuart is currently working on ten book projects.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 15, 2022
HAPPY POETRY MONTH!
april is national poetry month,
so here come thirty floats!
the cynics here will call this plan
a shameless grab for votes.
and maybe there’s some truth to that—
i do love validation,
but charitably consider it
a rhyme-y celebration.
i don’t intend to flood your feed—
i’ll just post one a day.
endure four weeks of reruns
and then it will be may!
**************************
right from the opening poem, it is clear that this is a more subdued and melancholy collection than expected from the lovably goofy stuart ross who throws around the word “boner” and makes adorably lo-tech book trailers.
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 fork-tailed fish
I am this fish and I search
for that letter in my mother’s hand
beyond the Atlantic coast
i mean, phoar.
it’s definitely a meditative collection, heavy on the preoccupation with nostalgia and happier memories during experiences of illness and death, but it’s not morbid or gloomy, just … mature. which is the opposite of a bad thing, and it just goes to show that stu’s got range and an expressive depth of emotional accessibility that is truly lovely.
there is some beautiful imagery here:
His veins are made of thread.
and some intriguing phrasings:
When I opened my eyes.,
everyone became
very emotional
all at once.
and it’s not entirely without humor - the poem titled HELLO, I’M A POEM ABOUT JOHNNY CASH starts out funny, although it does not end on a laughing note.
there are many shout-outs to other poets, and some riffs on their work, including one of my own favorite poets in the poem titled:
POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM MATTHEA HARVEY
can you guess who the poet i like is??? hmmmm???
it's a very striking collection, and i highly recommend it to you folks who like real poetry where real thoughts and feelings are articulated in a thoughtful and precise way intended to elicit a reaction of recognition or strike an emotional chord in a reader
and not
teen angst
in garbage words
written like this
on tumblr.
also, the paper is really nicely textured. so there's that.
come to my blog!
april is national poetry month,
so here come thirty floats!
the cynics here will call this plan
a shameless grab for votes.
and maybe there’s some truth to that—
i do love validation,
but charitably consider it
a rhyme-y celebration.
i don’t intend to flood your feed—
i’ll just post one a day.
endure four weeks of reruns
and then it will be may!
**************************
right from the opening poem, it is clear that this is a more subdued and melancholy collection than expected from the lovably goofy stuart ross who throws around the word “boner” and makes adorably lo-tech book trailers.
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 fork-tailed fish
I am this fish and I search
for that letter in my mother’s hand
beyond the Atlantic coast
i mean, phoar.
it’s definitely a meditative collection, heavy on the preoccupation with nostalgia and happier memories during experiences of illness and death, but it’s not morbid or gloomy, just … mature. which is the opposite of a bad thing, and it just goes to show that stu’s got range and an expressive depth of emotional accessibility that is truly lovely.
there is some beautiful imagery here:
His veins are made of thread.
and some intriguing phrasings:
When I opened my eyes.,
everyone became
very emotional
all at once.
and it’s not entirely without humor - the poem titled HELLO, I’M A POEM ABOUT JOHNNY CASH starts out funny, although it does not end on a laughing note.
there are many shout-outs to other poets, and some riffs on their work, including one of my own favorite poets in the poem titled:
POEM BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM MATTHEA HARVEY
can you guess who the poet i like is??? hmmmm???
it's a very striking collection, and i highly recommend it to you folks who like real poetry where real thoughts and feelings are articulated in a thoughtful and precise way intended to elicit a reaction of recognition or strike an emotional chord in a reader
and not
teen angst
in garbage words
written like this
on tumblr.
also, the paper is really nicely textured. so there's that.
come to my blog!
August 9, 2019
I don't read much poetry but the first poem in this collection made me teary-eyed so I'm going to put that one in the win column. On the whole, I found this to be a strange, playful, surreal, and wistful collection; there is at least one line in each of these poems that surprised and delighted me and others that made everything in my head go very still and quiet for a moment. If I had to guess, I'd say that is exactly what good poetry is supposed to do.
September 28, 2017
Intimate subjects dealt with in these poems,but with a no rhyme kind of feel.Like reading stories,short ones.Someone who likes to distract you or send you elsewhere and sometimes comes back to the subject but other times just leaves you hanging. Two lines in 2015 Discrete Portions caught me"The wind subsided and snow began to zigzag from the sky.Each flake had several choices to make."I liked that a lot. Nice artwork for the cover.
June 7, 2016
Stunning. Beautiful. An instant classic.
September 17, 2019
A very personal (at yes, still surreal) collection from Ross, who deals with grief, love, and reflections both past and recent. Another wondrous book from a prolific and consistent Canadian poet.
August 9, 2018
A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent
by Stuart Ross
A Buckrider Book (2016)
$18 ISBN 978-1-928088-11-0
68pgs
reviewed by Nathaniel G. Moore
In a recent poetry column in *The New Yorker*, Dan Chiasson suggests “[n]ew books were greeted this year with huge anticipation, partly because poets are again becoming well known before their first books turn up, their poems snapped by smartphone cameras when they appear in magazines and distributed widely on Twitter and Instagram.” In the bizarro universe of this luxurious and seemingly fictional reality is the microuniverse of Canadian poetry. And prominately situated in said microuniverse is small press icon Stuart Ross. For a writer so self-aware, self-styled and at times self-effacing online, Ross, author of dozens of books and founder of many key underground publishing movements has delivered a far more enjoyable outing in this, his latest collection *A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent*, which I believe was his goal with this book. During its publication, the book was marketed by the author as finally “selling out” and publishing a serious poetry collection [with Wolsak & Wynn] Ross veers (although not entirely) from Dali-like portraits of surrealsim into lyric terrain full of pacing, pathos, regret and longing. Very early in the collection in a William Carlos Williams like trance, Ross pines away in ‘August 2008’, which begins “I arrived with a jar of pickles” in its simplicity, I was transported to the first time I read ‘This is Just to Say’ by Mr. Williams, and waiting for a typical Ross punchline, was detoured to a serene ending without a lot of noise.
Intimate portals into domestic ancestory are rampant in the collection. In ‘My Mother Had A Store In Our Basement’ the reader is bombarded with the clutter and cherished pathos of memory: “I took my friends down through my mother’s store and together we stared into the flames.” The furnace acts as a heart in the poem, where his mother’s memory still lives while the poet examines the various levels and compartments that made up his former home.
Ross’ parred down dregs gives comedy an intimate veneer in In ‘The Hanging’ with the recreation of a grandfather thinking his grandson’s pajama top freely swinging from a banister was in fact the young boy committing suicide. While the surreal poems are not completely embargoed in this collection, the more straight-forward, tender and quasi-serious pieces are remarkably frank, and professionally rendered.
‘Meanwhile, Not Far From Keel And Wilson: 1’ deals with loss and family in a powerful tableau of life and death and respect. In it the poet visits his parents and brother’s graves and we the reader can see / hear what the deceased are nearly hearing. “‘It’s feet,’ says Shirley. And then they hear a voice. “It’s him again, Shirl,” says Syd. Him is the voice that comes from up above where their feet once were.” And fragments of dialogue continue through the piece, finally landing on a single memory between two brothers.
A Sparrow is easily Ross's most accomplished collection in recent years. While never conforming to whatever "we" as Canadian poets feel is the right way to poem, and never writing so outside the framework of tolerance as to be obtuse or alien, this collection is a lilting, inviting, surprising work that fascinates and, in the right hands, could introduce green poets and poetry students to a truly dedicated voice in Canadian poetry.
by Stuart Ross
A Buckrider Book (2016)
$18 ISBN 978-1-928088-11-0
68pgs
reviewed by Nathaniel G. Moore
In a recent poetry column in *The New Yorker*, Dan Chiasson suggests “[n]ew books were greeted this year with huge anticipation, partly because poets are again becoming well known before their first books turn up, their poems snapped by smartphone cameras when they appear in magazines and distributed widely on Twitter and Instagram.” In the bizarro universe of this luxurious and seemingly fictional reality is the microuniverse of Canadian poetry. And prominately situated in said microuniverse is small press icon Stuart Ross. For a writer so self-aware, self-styled and at times self-effacing online, Ross, author of dozens of books and founder of many key underground publishing movements has delivered a far more enjoyable outing in this, his latest collection *A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent*, which I believe was his goal with this book. During its publication, the book was marketed by the author as finally “selling out” and publishing a serious poetry collection [with Wolsak & Wynn] Ross veers (although not entirely) from Dali-like portraits of surrealsim into lyric terrain full of pacing, pathos, regret and longing. Very early in the collection in a William Carlos Williams like trance, Ross pines away in ‘August 2008’, which begins “I arrived with a jar of pickles” in its simplicity, I was transported to the first time I read ‘This is Just to Say’ by Mr. Williams, and waiting for a typical Ross punchline, was detoured to a serene ending without a lot of noise.
Intimate portals into domestic ancestory are rampant in the collection. In ‘My Mother Had A Store In Our Basement’ the reader is bombarded with the clutter and cherished pathos of memory: “I took my friends down through my mother’s store and together we stared into the flames.” The furnace acts as a heart in the poem, where his mother’s memory still lives while the poet examines the various levels and compartments that made up his former home.
Ross’ parred down dregs gives comedy an intimate veneer in In ‘The Hanging’ with the recreation of a grandfather thinking his grandson’s pajama top freely swinging from a banister was in fact the young boy committing suicide. While the surreal poems are not completely embargoed in this collection, the more straight-forward, tender and quasi-serious pieces are remarkably frank, and professionally rendered.
‘Meanwhile, Not Far From Keel And Wilson: 1’ deals with loss and family in a powerful tableau of life and death and respect. In it the poet visits his parents and brother’s graves and we the reader can see / hear what the deceased are nearly hearing. “‘It’s feet,’ says Shirley. And then they hear a voice. “It’s him again, Shirl,” says Syd. Him is the voice that comes from up above where their feet once were.” And fragments of dialogue continue through the piece, finally landing on a single memory between two brothers.
A Sparrow is easily Ross's most accomplished collection in recent years. While never conforming to whatever "we" as Canadian poets feel is the right way to poem, and never writing so outside the framework of tolerance as to be obtuse or alien, this collection is a lilting, inviting, surprising work that fascinates and, in the right hands, could introduce green poets and poetry students to a truly dedicated voice in Canadian poetry.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2018
I really, really liked the first poem but the rest were kind of hit and miss for me, unfortunately. A lot of it felt more like talking, like the author was just relaying his life story in more of a biography-style than poetry. I don't know if it was meant to be a mix of prose and poems but a lot of it didn't really seem to reach for more than what'd you expect in a simple conversation. Some good ones stuck out but not really the collection for me.
January 18, 2023
There’s always a certain comfort and excitement in opening a collection of poems by Stuart Ross, and knowing 100% I’m gonna enjoy my time there. Thank you for making poetry that feels like home ❤️
May 22, 2023
A book of bittersweet brilliance.
A pleasure to read this book!
A pleasure to read this book!
physical-copy-tbr
May 22, 2017WHAT A TITLE!!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews