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Spencer Gordon

Goodreads Author

Born

in Thompson, Manitoba, Canada

Website

https://www.spencer-gordon.com

Twitter

spencergordon

Genre

Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction

Member Since

March 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomspencergordon

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Spencer Gordon is the author of three books: a collection of dramatic monologues, A Horse at the Window (House of Anansi Press, June 2024), the poetry collection Cruise Missile Liberals (Nightwood Editions, 2017), and the short story collection Cosmo (Coach House Books, 2012). Reviews of A Horse at the Window below:

“A Horse at the Window is a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for our fractured, pixelated 21st century. With maximum velocity, existential wit, and dazzling imagery, Spencer Gordon spins a zoetrope of the Anthropocene that uncannily helps make sense of being alive today, yesterday, and tomorrow while claiming there is no point.”— Zsuzsi Gartner, author of the Giller shortlisted Better Living through Plastic Explosives, a Spencer Gordon is the author of three books: a collection of dramatic monologues, A Horse at the Window (House of Anansi Press, June 2024), the poetry collection Cruise Missile Liberals (Nightwood Editions, 2017), and the short story collection Cosmo (Coach House Books, 2012). Reviews of A Horse at the Window below:

“A Horse at the Window is a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for our fractured, pixelated 21st century. With maximum velocity, existential wit, and dazzling imagery, Spencer Gordon spins a zoetrope of the Anthropocene that uncannily helps make sense of being alive today, yesterday, and tomorrow while claiming there is no point.”— Zsuzsi Gartner, author of the Giller shortlisted Better Living through Plastic Explosives, and Writers Trust finalist The Beguiling
“Its poetics fanned by tutelary spirits, A Horse at the Window spans the burning issues of a world torn between the tangible and the digital. Okay, so it might set your head on fire. But that’s just as well.”— S. D. Chrostowska, author of A Cage for Every Child, The Eyelid, and Permission
“A collection of super-funny, consistently enervating quasi-monologues that vehemently exists both in the right-now and in the eternal. There’s also a Buddhistic aspect to it that, while somewhat beyond my own dismally unenlightened mind, I can feel rubbing off on me as I read. And yeah, I laughed.” — Rob Benvie, the Toronto Star
“Shows itself full of compassion and predicaments that stress the minds of its narrators ... a book of extravagant fancy and heightened language ... Almost every piece encourages us to reflect, at first on the meaning of what we’re reading, and then on its potentially wider application ... A Horse at the Window is a pleasing work of ideas.” — Jeff Bursey, The Miramichi Reader
“Is it short fiction? Prose poetry? I think so. So far, it's brilliant.” — Gary Barwin, All Lit Up
“Each entry moves at a feverish pace as it blends highbrow with lowbrow: Kantian philosophy, pagan theology, and modernist literary references meet OnlyFans, Top Gun, and Twitch ... his observations are exciting and introspective ... Gordon effectively recognizes our overburdened condition and reproduces it with great accuracy ... [and] the scattered bits of deep reflection make for a worthwhile read.” — Alexander Sallas, The Literary Review of Canada, Bookworm #60
“To enter A Horse at the Window is to enter the world of dreams and visions, of funhouse mirrors and social-media terrors. Over four pages, for example, the narrator confesses all he was “not nice enough to” do in "Reasons for My Success," a portrait of a bizarre dude. The longest piece, "The Garbage and Oil Thread," is a meditation on environmental crisis that so self-consciously piles words upon words that the crisis feels as if it consists of language as much as microbes and atoms. Throughout, prepare for sharp waves of word flow often depopulated from bodies and context, polished to an eerie sheen ... That Gordon connects these 'stories' to ancient Buddhist writings (among other intertextual hoodwinks) highlights his talent, frequently profound, sometimes miraculous.”— Michael Bryson, Zoomer Magazine (Zed Book Club)
“A book that I’ve been returning to again and again is A Horse at the Window by Spencer Gordon, who’s a fantastically interesting and original and poetic writer” — Damian Tarnopolsky, The Juncture [and] “[it’s] multifaceted, dark and brilliant ...” — All Lit Up
“Whatever the publishing world might want to call these pieces, they are profound glimpses into the jawdropping, terrifying, sublime, and mundane.” — Open Book
“Spencer Gordon's A Horse At the Window is a book for our times: a plaintive cry for help and a beautiful meditation.” — D. D. Miller
“An intertextual masterpiece, A Horse at the Window explores texts new and old from the digital to ancient Buddhist texts. These texts open up a path for Spencer to discuss capitalism, compassion for the planet and its beings, life ...more

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Spencer Gordon’s books

Average rating: 4.26 · 151 ratings · 27 reviews · 13 distinct works • Similar authors

	Cosmo 4.01 avg rating — 84 ratings — published 2013 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cruise Missile Liberals 4.71 avg rating — 24 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Horse at the Window 4.47 avg rating — 19 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poetry is Dead: Humour Issue 9, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2014 by Dina Del Bucchia (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Laura Matwichuck, Sheryda Warrener 4.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Cosmo it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tennessee Electric Power Co v. Ickes U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chenery Corp v. Securities & Exchange Commission U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Our Gorder Family: a Genealogical and Biographical Record it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Our Gordon Family: A Genealogical and Biographical Record 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Reviews and Blurbs of A Horse at the Window

A Horse at the Window

Spencer Gordon

“A collection of super-funny, consistently enervating quasi-monologues that vehemently exists both in the right-now and in the eternal. There’s also a Buddhistic aspect to it that, while somewhat beyond my own dismally unenlightened mind, I can feel rubbing off on me as I read. And yeah, I laughed.” — Rob Benvie, the Toronto Star

“Shows itself full of compassion a Read more of this blog post »

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Published on January 21, 2026 07:33

Spencer is Currently Reading

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Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Book 1

by Gudo Nishijima

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Mar 02, 2026 06:40AM

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Quotes by Spencer Gordon (?)

“There is no ME without books; they’re everything I remember from childhood, from maturity … All that’s happened to me has been coloured, permanently, by my reading.”
― Spencer Gordon, Cosmo

tags: books, quotes-about-reading, reading, reading-books

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“All the things she couldn’t say, the things no one wanted to hear.”
― Spencer Gordon, Cosmo

tags: can-lit, canadian-literature

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“...one song, one note that heals the guilty chaos of our days, making sense of our loneliness, our perjured feelings, our sickness and our poverty, how we shall never be beautiful, how our heads will run over with unbearable secrets and how we are sentenced to this, serving us right -- when the song should end, be cut down, finished, and the singer not go on singing.”
― Spencer Gordon, Cosmo

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Spencer Gordon’s Followers (35)

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