W. W. E. Ross
William Wrightson Eustace Ross, known as W. W. E. Ross, was a Canadian poet and geophysicist born on June 14, 1894, in rural Ontario. He pursued a degree in chemistry at the University of Toronto before serving in the Canadian army during World War I. Following the war, Ross had a distinguished career at the Dominion Magnetic Observatory in Agincourt, Ontario. Despite his scientific background, he developed a passion for poetry later in life, publishing his first collection, *Laconics*, at nearly thirty. His work is notable for its modernist style, characterized by its tight structure and imagery, often reflecting his love for the natural world. Ross sought to challenge conventional Canadian poetry, favoring a more austere and imagistic approach. Throughout his life, he maintained a private demeanor, using pseudonyms to avoid fame. While he was not widely recognized outside of academic circles during his lifetime, his innovative contributions to Canadian poetry have become increasingly appreciated for their emotional restraint and technical adeptness. Ross passed away from cancer in 1966, leaving behind a unique legacy in the landscape of modern poetic expression.
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Subject Terms
W. W. E. Ross
Poet
- Born: June 14, 1894
- Birthplace: Near Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
- Died: August 26, 1966
- Place of death:
Biography
William Wrightson Eustace Ross was born on June 14, 1894, in rural Ontario, Canada, near the town of Peterborough. His family moved to nearby Pembroke when he was young, and Ross spent his childhood investigating the open wilderness and cultivating a love of the natural sciences. He earned a degree in chemistry from the University of Toronto in 1914 and, after a stint in the Canadian army during World War I, he began a long and successful career as a geophysicist at the Dominion Magnetic Observatory in Agincourt, Ontario.
The origin of Ross’s interest in poetry is unclear. He did not publish any poetry until he was nearly thirty and would publish little after turning forty, except for work commissioned for anthologies. He spent much of his last twenty years revisiting his earlier poems, refining their intricate structures and reworking their sonic effects. He disliked previous Canadian poetry, which was characterized by its bloated, heavily rhythmic, and flowery landscape verse. Instead, he found an appealing aesthetic in modernism, and his poetry exhibited the daring formal experiments of this style and the chiseled lyrics of an austere kind of imagism.
His first collection of poems, Laconics, featured stark, stripped image-based verses with the slender presence and fragile grace of Japanese verse; he worked in a signature two- stress line, thus his poems are columnar and appear as narrow strips of words. The poems reflected Ross’s scientific background and his scientist’s love of careful observation. He turned readers toward the natural world, scouted that world for the defining image that resonated quietly, and found in the precious natural beauties of his native Ontario a tonic reprieve for what he considered a contemporary cultural and moral wasteland. In Sonnets, Ross expanded his vision, quixotically arguing that the modern poet might function in that wasteland culture as a kind of prophet, offering the visionary energy of art itself. He espoused the supernatural origins of poetic inspiration and a mysticism that challenged the worship of the mind that he saw as defining contemporary humanity.
Ross published under the name W. W. E. Ross and the pen name E. R. to avoid celebrity. Given his indifference to fame, his fiercely guarded privacy, and his satisfying career in the sciences, his poetry found its most appreciative audience within the narrow confines of academia. Ross’s work from his last twenty years—largely obscure translations, intricate language puzzles, allusive experiments in form, and esoteric parodies—was scarcely circulated. He printed some of his poems privately and sent them as review copies to selected journals he respected.
When he died of cancer in 1966, Ross was little known outside of academic circles. However, his slender poetic output brought to Canadian poetry an innovative voice of modernism, characterized by emotional restraint, quiet verbal ingenuity, direct diction, technical subtlety, and a scientific regard for the natural world.