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July 1, 2005
Razovsky family rides again
Toronto poet's collections incorporate dogs, noses and Jewish
tradition.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Before he even reached adolescence, Stuart Ross was sure he would
become a poet. When he was six, his mother held the microphone while
he read Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" into
a reel-to-reel tape recorder. His early influences included Ogden
Nash, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Allan Poe. The submissions he sent
to a Toronto paper at the age of 11 were "rejected, gently,"
but the aspiring bard persisted – despite being "the kind
of kid who got beat up."
By the time he hit his teens, Ross, who's appearing at the West
Coast Poetry Festival July 10, was well on his way to becoming a
full-time scribe. He toured high schools giving readings and was
published in an anthology at the age of 16.
Since then, he has produced dozens of books, some through established
publishers and many more on his own. Both give him a buzz. "While
it's a thrill to get my paws on the first copy of my book [from
a publisher]," he observed, "I get an equal thrill once
I've collated, folded and stapled a little chapbook of my poems
or stories. I'm in love with the book as object."
Among his most recent titles are the poetry retrospective Hey,
Crumbling Balcony! and the autobiographical ramblings contained
in Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer. Ross spent a decade
selling his work on the streets of Toronto, with signs around his
neck. "Writer Going to Hell: Buy My Books," said one.
"Canadian Writer: Actual Size," read another.
"I was a magnet for every crazy walking by, so I got a lot
of good fodder for my writing," he mused. "One guy, this
respectable middle-aged businessman who looked sort of like Mr.
Clean, came up to me and started haranguing me on whether I paid
my taxes. Then he threatened to punch me out and, when I packed
up my stuff and ducked into a nearby bookstore for shelter, he stood
in the doorway and yelled, 'Hooknose! I saved you from the fire
in World War II!' I couldn't believe anyone would really use the
term 'hooknose.' "
A better class of people also stopped by. "One very nice woman
asked to see my books and wondered if I had any fiction," Ross
remembered. "I handed her a copy of my novella Father, the
Cowboys are Ready to Come Down from the Attic. I asked her if
she wrote, too, and she said she did. I asked her if she'd had anything
published, and she said yes. I wondered what her name was –
maybe I'd seen something of hers. Alice Munro, she replied."
These days, Ross makes a living writing poetry, fiction and non-fiction,
teaching workshops (including a "poetry boot camp" for
neophyte rhymers), editing manuscripts and publishing a literary
magazine. Still, "It took me until I was about 40 or so to
actually say, 'I'm a writer,' when people asked me what I did,"
he confessed. "I needed to get a whole lot of literary accomplishments
under my belt before I could be so presumptuous. It still feels
a bit pretentious, even though it's true."
His subject matter ranges, quite literally, from the sublime to
the ridiculous and includes personal ads, poodles and a man whose
nose and briefcase swap places, causing exasperation at a business
meeting. Other poems are more introspective and personal –
such as "Road Trip, Southern Ontario, 1999," in which
he mourns the loss of his father.
In fact, it was the death of three family members that brought Ross
closer to his Jewish roots. In 2001, he published a collection called
Razovsky at Peace (Razovsky was his family's original name)
that, is in many ways, elegiac in tone.
"Perhaps it's a common thing to get closer to your religion
when there's a death in the family," he said. "My mother,
father and a brother all died within a few years of each other,
and I was very comforted by all the rituals, by the rabbi's visits
and by the humanity of the shivah. It all made me feel more Jewish,
and this began to infiltrate my writing."
He's even come to terms with his name since the essay he wrote about
it in Confessions: "My dad's parents were Razovskys
and my mom's were Blatts. But I turned out to be a Jew named not
only Ross, but Stuart Ross. Stuart Keith, even. My grandfathers
were Sam and Max. I'd take either of those names for sure. At least
then, at my bar mitzvah, no one would have expected me to come marching
through the congregation playing bagpipes."
The West Coast Poetry Festival runs July 7-10 in Vancouver and features
writers from across the country, including bill bissett and Griffin
Prize winner Christian Bök. For more information, visit www.wcpf.ca.
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