in your bleak, times of trouble, &
the uncertain Years to,
Come,
My two skeletal, well lotioned
hands,
Could be the ones,
That free your famished tiger, from its
Bird…..cage
& Hoist in
Your Wayward
direction, the stark, White -
un-onion skinning light,
of….
The Black, Lactating
Sun.
from the poem 'Olga' - Stedmond’ Pardy’s
The Pleasures Of This Planet Aren’t Enough
Mosaic Press, forthcoming, July 2021 (official release)
In the final stanza of Olga, Stedmond Pardy brings together a romantic declaration of unbridled adoration and a general missive for these wearying times. His uncut declaration of a vivid gaze spent upon a “Criminally Un-venerated girl” creates a capsule of thematic suggestive versification running through the collection, in parts surreal observation of a city and a planet gone terribly ‘wrong,’ and an unabashed caring for and loving toward the bodies he encounters in urban, semi-dreamscapes - poetic sites that poet Dane Swan has called a debut collection by a writer “As heavily influenced by surrealism as he is the Beat Generation . . . full of awes, beauty, wonder, darkness, despair and much more."
Pardy’s romantic declarations take on a beautifully skewed heteronormative tone, making inroads into a more marginalized gaze when he speaks, through simile, of ‘Olga’ “Being like a refugee in the brutal cold, in urgent need of, winter…..clothes/or a Transgender/boy Forced to wrestle…” A form of queer normative gazing refracts through urban corporeal views as the observer revels in and describes, with elegantly crafted abandon, the bodies that move him.
A gorgeous tension between landscapes, both human and geographic, changing with time and torrent, exists throughout the collection, becoming, simultaneously, a staccato, fluid, rhythmic and seamless series of poems that meander energetically in and out of each new title, subtly linking and dividing them as the writer speaks candidly of his impressions.
And the titles stand alone as enticing invitations into this intimate mindset, ranging from the present nostalgia of A free jazz poem for Joan Baez and Ode to Liza Minelli, to “The Script for Taxi Driver scared the shit out of Everybody” and A Fragment of a Long poem written whilst walking down Yonge Street.
What begin as engaging icons, in their titular presence (Baez & Minelli), become journey poems far away from the subject of initial desire, and into a kind of free associative map of specific moments in specific times.
Ah, I can clearly remember The
The Nebulous Vistas of our lunar earth!
Us
Self exiling Ourselves along the
Seashores of that OTHER World,
David Bowie & Nine Inch Nails Touring,
Together in 1995,
The St, John, St. Vitus Mania,
of 1518,
You dating Steve Jobs? & Bob Dylan,
& you locking arms with Me,
After
Your performance, at Roy Thomson
HALL.
A free jazz poem for Joan Baez
Evocative, beautifully broken line breaks, capital letters in a sea of free verse and jazz-like meditations, blank spaces elegantly littered throughout, suggesting breathlessness and pause, saturate the pages of this collection with a literary performance heralded as a potentially “landmark” moment "in Canadian literature.” (Dane Swan, back cover)
In some ways these are Toronto poems that speak to a global audience from the perspective of a writer whose life has been profoundly affected by the physical changes of a city he has spent much of his life in (e.g. Yonge Street). And then the time, intimated in his work, when his global visitation was about to expand, and the next pandemic arrived, and everything changed, except for the poet's passion for putting words to paper and giving them a vivid, rich, and startling life of their own.
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“The joy of publishing is discovering a totally original and new voice…here in Stedmond Pardy we have found ONE!”
“This first collection of poems by Stedmond Pardy has the potential to become a landmark in Canadian literature – to encourage you to become lost inside a painting. No street is just a street, no addict, an addict with Pardy.Reading Stedmond Pardy’s jazz-infused poetry is to be pulled into a different world, whether you wish to be there, or not. As heavily influenced by surrealism as he is by the Beat Generation, the worlds Pardy creates can be full of awes, beauty, wonder, darkness, despair and much more. Pardy the poet is willing to take risks, beyond vacuous, redundant mimicry; Pardy dares to swim in the deep end of the pool.”
Dane Swan, author of A Mingus Lullaby, 2017 Trillium Book Award for Poetry Finalist.
“Stedmond Pardy’s is a barbaric voice. No mere versifier, his lines and cadences come from deep in his body where the imagination lives. A walk down Younge Street becomes an Daliesque voyage, the poem’s imagery conjured from an inner world where beached whales coexist with Joan Baez, the Pyntian Oracle at Delphi and the corrupted premier of Italy. A psychedelic rant, Pardy’s poetry is also the utterance of a well-informed, streetwise, passionate voice, prophesying doom and hoping for peace in long, lyric lines that sing. “
Stanely Fefferman, author of Heart of all Music & Home was Elsewhere.
Stedmond Pardy is a self educated, Left handed Poet of Mixed Ancestry ( Newfoundland & St. Kitts/Nevis ). Originally from the Lakeshore, Mimico area & now residing…Dionysus knows Where?…He got into the literary scene AFTER THE Mysterious music Reviewer the Lonely Vagabond got hold of some of his work, & Hooked him up with The late great poet & Host of the radio show “Howl on 89.5 CIUT”. Since then He has performed his work Around the Greater Toronto Area & has appeared on stages In Montreal & Washington state. The Quotes “An artist is an instrument through which the Universe reveals itself” & “Word poetry Is for every man, but soul poetry alas, Is not Heavily distributed” Are the words he tries To live by.
