Saturday

by Margaret Ross

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2024

Reviews

[Trey Purves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best poetry collection ever

Kaylee knows ball

[Sara Luzuriaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

i could not love her more

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

What would autobiography look like if it were forced into a rigid box. If the writer was forced to perform in the box. The parameters pre-defined. But, then, the poet embraces the requirements given to her. Because the autobiographies she’s writing don’t actually concede to a set of uniform boxes. They’re designed to make you feel boxed-into a set context while you’re reading. They’re a series of boxes but made from different shapes, different contortions of “shape.” It’s like they’re “autobiographies” in the end, interested in what a box means, and what a box must feel like.

That’s what reading Margaret Ross’s Saturday is. Autobiography aware it might be read as “autobiography.” Where Ross stares hard at her every intention to write an autobiography, but only if it’s done while the family reunion takes place, only if it’s done in the room you shared with your sister as a child, only during that summer when you taught a course and met a man who would impose himself on your life. There are many shapes a life can be shaped into depending on what the autobiography focuses on. What if commerce or money served as a centripetal force throwing the poet’s version of life out from the center. What order would they have? What shape? And what I appreciate is Ross looking at purchases or services rendered as an action in life rather than some distilled essence of who she is. Like each transaction could be folded into a series of silhouettes pressing into the walls of the house. I’m thinking in particular of the poems framing her life via the babysitter she had growing up. A relationship filled with genuine affection, but also something that was purchased.

At the heart, Ross’s exist as a discursive misshapenness. What it would feel like to have rugs piled on top of you. Each poetic statement weighting you down. And you have to admit, it’s a little comforting. Maybe even cozy beneath all the layers. And whereas there is discursiveness in poetry that exists mainly in that pile-on mode, I read Ross’s fitting an order or shape. Her commitment to context defines what could be considered their edges.

[Sierra Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

i miss camp

[anon · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent

[Jane Freiman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new favorite

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narrative poems, verging on short stories.

[Megan Pinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. Love how these poems move.

[Olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saturday by Margaret Ross is a collection of poems that focuses on themes of imposter syndrome, and the growing pains of adjusting to a new place. Ross frequently represents her adjustment to with an almost apathetic or awkward tone contrasted with occasional bouts of high emotion. The way she speaks reflects this sort of off kilter feeling of being in a new place. In her poem “Macho” she talks about this adjustment to a new neighborhood, focusing mostly on the images of a place that seems somehow both familiar and unfamiliar. She notes these images as if they’re new, well noting them like she’s seen them a million times before, “he found my hope pathetic, then annoying. He said I think you wish you were that dog,” (3). Well the statement is apathetic in nature, mostly just fact she contrasts that a few lines later with an intimate discussion of her relationship, “It required constant testing, trying to humiliate while seeming innocent, uninvest,” (4). I enjoyed how Ross plays with intonation creating these quick peaks of intensity before falling back down, and part of the reason I responded so strongly was because of this technique because it created a more raw emotional experience with these build ups. Another thing I found particularly interesting was her choice of subject matter in a few of the pieces because it seemed so far removed from this urban setting she highlighted in many of her pieces. In “A Present” she emphasizes these delicate intimate images of the relationship between her and her surroundings. For example she talks very interestingly about eating rotisserie chicken, “his body was so beautiful, I wanted to hurt it,” (35) the way she addresses her relationship with the world like this rotisserie chicken is so intimate despite the lack of any real connection on the part of the food. We also see her diverge from the more urban setting in “Orange Tree” in which she focuses heavily on natural image, “a begonia leaf is a pebbled surface green and burgundy” (82). Overall I think that this divergence from these urban schools and streets is an interesting way to interrupt our reading of this collection. I think one of the main reasons Ross wrote this collection was to express that awkward space of young adulthood. She navigates it clumsily, in a way authentic to the feeling of nervousness about becoming a “real” adult.