Poetry Review: “I Cut My Finger” by Stuart Ross

Whimsical and surreal, I Cut My Finger plucks images from different ends of the brain to recreate our concepts of everyday objects in an absurd and original, yet accessible, fashion. From the quirky front cover, where scratchy penmanship and minimalist sketches depict the feature poems, to opening works “The Door” and “I Cut My Finger,” the reader is introduced to a world where up is not necessarily up, and where word play and philosophical observation of material things reveal poetry in unexpected places.

The title poem for this collection sets the lyrical tone to one of constantly restructuring or re-imagining ‘the world as we know it’:

… I thought that for me
mountains are big solid things poking into the air,
like at god,
but for people for whom solid
is the absence of solid,
then they’ve got upside-down mountains
pointing towards earth. (I Cut My Finger)

For Stuart Ross, this process entails the deliberate examination of language, which he accomplishes in a true tongue-in-cheek manner. For example, in “I Cut My Finger” he flirts with the literal meaning of the word ‘recount’: “Oh the adventures I had climbing, / let me recount them (in case I counted / wrong the first time).” Similarly, he draws attention to the peculiarities of the English language:

I let Misery have one
right in the stomach. (Not
the actual organ itself,
but the place on his body
where the stomach is under.) (How I Became Exquisite)

Not only is the composition and function of words confronted frequently, but also that of material, everyday objects, as in “I Cut My Finger” (“I tried calling Dana but there wasn’t any phone / and I cut my finger / dialing a rock”) and “50 O’Clock” (“Everything was made of something else”). Furthermore, Ross makes no assumptions about the reader’s familiarity with the mundane–he defines everyday forms as though explaining them to an extraterrestrial creature:

He racked his brains to recall
what “don’t” meant and meanwhile
he bumped his head on a building.
A building’s a square thing with a hole inside
where people live or maybe work. (A Guy, Some Flippers, A Building)

In doing so, he effectively demonstrates that words are just symbols of our experience as human beings, symbols that we take for granted in their consistency and meaning until otherwise challenged. Therefore, while the point of view employed by Ross may be uniquely obscure, his mode consistently investigates images from new perspectives to create a patterned art.

In a further exercise of word play, Ross seems at times to write–or organize–according to a stream of consciousness. At the end of “How I Became Exquisite” he writes about “approaching stray orphans,” and the next poem is titled “An Orphan.” This in turn ends with “beside an empty ocean,” and the next poem is titled “The Ocean.” Further along, “The Bed” ends with the attempted burial of a mother; the next poem, “Song,” describes the event of visiting his family members’ graves. This creates a flow within the collection itself, tying together poems and prose which otherwise explore a wide range of topics and experiences.

Another brief exercise of stream of consciousness can be found in “Mary is the Merry One,” where scattered images seem at first randomly organized, except that some association is found to exist among the words (though rarely behind the concepts they conjure or represent). Take the first stanza, for example:

Do you go to many parties?
We joined a party of hunters.
It pays to be particular in choosing a friend.
Sally is my particular friend.

The first line, a straightforward conversation-starter, is followed by a phrase that is unrelated other than employing [a novel exploration of] the word ‘party’. The third line, words of advice, follow semantically from the first (you go to a party with friends, generally). The fourth line restructures the grammatical role of the word ‘particular’ from the third line, accompanied by a repetition of ‘friend’. The remainder of the poem follows in somewhat the same pattern, though at times the method and message are harder to decipher.

Ross expresses throughout his collection some political and media influence, specifically within his piece “What’s Important Now,” thus dating himself to his particular culture and responding appropriately. Ross’s social and sometimes political observations are mirrored by  sharp self-explorations and questioning. In “The Bed” we encounter one philosophical exploration of consciousness and self-existence when Ross states that “A lighting fixture on the ceiling contained several dead flies, but only when it was on.” “Others Like Me” describes the actions we sometimes take or the rationalizations we provide to confirm that we are, in fact, alive, while “I Step Off The Plane” apologizes for the uncertainty and implications of consciousness:

A kitten is curled up, its eyes closed: I cannot tell whether it is sleeping or dead. Oh no, sorry – I cannot tell whether I am sleeping or dead.

Not only does Ross succeed in expressing his thoughts and observations in a concrete fashion, but he also forces the reader to cogitate often odd images and sentiments to find a meaning that speaks to their experiences and understanding. “The Surface” is riddled with oddities of speech, from the self-awareness of the poem itself (“The words agonized over their own inertia”; similarly, in “Sediment,” “…a poet better than me / would insert a really good sediment / metaphor right here. (Or, more poignantly, / here.)”) to phrases that seem to express a sort of nostalgia for past ambitions and ideals. There is also a dreamlike quality and depth to these phrases, which emphasizes the irony of the title. For instance, “she slept urgently amid the words” may evoke a feeling of unease, because our experience of ‘sleep’ and ‘urgency’ are intuitively in conflict. Similarly, later, “I recognized / my eyelids. I could pick them out / in a lineup” seems an impossible phrase because the very act of exposing our eyelids is to give up sight, and so the reader shakes their head and tries again.

The dissonance with which the reader responds to the mixed images generation from Stuart’s mind will give cause to a double-take effect, so to speak, whereby the reader is forced to take better care in pondering their interpretation. This is because, while the descriptive qualities of Ross’s poems paint quite a picture for the reader, the scene is not familiar. In this sense, I would argue that Ross is imparting his imaginative abilities and successfully broadening the horizons of creative thought among his readers.