Poems at My Doorstep

Laurence Steven is Chairman of the English Department at Laurentian
University and author of Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s
Fiction.

This slender volume of free verse addresses family relationships,
alienation, and social consciousness—all in the context of the mutual
influence of eastern and western culture.

Rode’s parents become the focus for his contrast of the western way
of life with the ancient eastern mind. In these family poems there is a
simplicity and genuine emotion not often found in Canadian poetry.
“Mustard Flowers,” about his father sitting on a bench watching time
pass, illustrates the color, vividness, concreteness, and directness of
Rode’s imagery: “When a yellow car passes by / a thousand mustard
flowers / bloom in his head.” In “Waiting For Rusty,” he depicts
his mother sitting with her “little holy book” and pondering that
“worldly relations are all Maya / enslaving you in this life.”
Although he came to Canada from India in 1966, it is apparent that Rode
has not forgotten his roots.

Yet those roots have definitely been influenced by western social
consciousness. Where his parents feel a profound alienation, Rode’s
mixture of culture expresses itself in a certain satire and ambiguity.
In the poem “Labels,” he refers to the labels a baby is given at
birth: “one for race. / One for colour. One / for religion and maybe /
one for caste,” then continues “You are born into a free world—
Congratulations!” The bitterness and satiric distance are clear.
“The Maharishi / and the baby in the womb / stare across / into each
other’s eyes.” “The Maharishi and the Baby” poignantly
juxtaposes the rival demands of a starving pregnant woman with the
spiritual advice to adjure the flesh as “Maya.” Rode’s eastern
religious tradition adds a complicating richness to his sense of
reality, and is a recurrent element in his poems.

There are weaknesses in this collection—tendencies to both melodrama
and sentimentality, and to belabor points—but prospective readers
should not be deterred from its manifest strengths.