And these poems are a dream to read. Never has so much sin been in the word "insinuation" before! Insinuate is a vital part of this poet's vocabulary and it crops up repeatedly. "Cottage", "locked - 1929/79 Reverb", "Stimpy Eyed Boys".
Ross is possessed of a carnivorous sexuality. Sex and Food equate throughout this collection.
Oysters, nacre, sea images insinuating like seaweed into hair and bathing suit. Ross is the Botticelli Venus with her world on an oyster shell.
"You're a nourishing feast
but too rich.
I need to grow lean, hard-fleshed,
consume my own organs:"
(from "Ferried, Egg")
"scored irritation if the blade
slips: your flesh, my flesh
opening"
(from "Nacreous")
"I come back to your skin, gilled
fish-gut tossed to coals - we must eat
it's
... a matter of amniotic
self-sufficiency in the subsequent blood-flow"
(from "Division")
As I read the poems, I was worried about the way Zan Ross (even her name is sexy!) seemed to become intimate with the inside of my head. "Another Tale, Post Anywhere", I wondered whether she rode the Rottnest ferry when my Dad was the skipper. He would have noticed her "Shot-in-the-back-with-rockets breasts", and every millimetre of her spandex-covered suspenders, "Under Cover At the Quokka Arms". I spent a high school summer holiday on Rottnest, and went there often. Thanks for your, different-to-my, spin on the old Rats Nest, Zan Ross.
Ross's poetry has the power to grip the reader like a novel does. It's a page turner, you want more, you want to know what happens, you want ...
I want people to read this collection, and so refrain from quoting an entire poem, but it ever a poem deserved it, "One Blue" does. Likewise, "Aromatherapy", which made my stomach curl and my inner thighs clench. This woman is SO good. This is a huge book, and I just melted into the poems. Ross has great power of engagement.
In the Sequence, I - VIII, Ross is very funny (VI). She likes to lick things (VII) and the surprise kick is that she's writing these impressive verses to tell that she has learned "about lust and the machinations of detail" from Dorothy Porter. Wonderful, and rare for a poet to acknowledge contemporary influences.
That Ross knows exactly what she is doing is demonstrated in "A Few of my Favourite Things", there is not a literary device that she is unfamiliar with.
Ross settles into a leisurely suite of prose poems in the final section, "Home To Roost". I like this change of style, the expansiveness of it is like the seascapes in the earlier sections. This book is so FULL. So beauty-full. The only things rustling for me in these poems were the sounds of clothes being cast off in the sand dunes. There is so much more than that. There is rattle and hum, deep, racking sobs like waves breaking. I felt as if I'd been dragged through sand-dunes by the hair after reading this. Scraped - everywhere.
I would have liked to have seen a photo of Zan Ross, and hope that one is included in her next book. I want to read lots more of Zan Ross.
(Reviewed by MML Bliss, September 2003)
