Return to Open Water: Poems New and Selected

Harold Rhenisch’s poetry is deceptively easy to read as he plays with language and ideas that slide along like a gentle stream over small, coloured pebbles. Yet for the meditative reader who takes the time to savour each word and to pause after each verse, there is much to learn from his poems.

Rhenisch is a prize-winning poet who has taught and read across Canada, Florida, and India. Still most of his years have been in B.C.’s interior and now on Vancouver Island. He has been praised for his delightful poems that bring places and people into sharp focus using a range of voices for dramatic presentations.

Some memorial lines are of his mother’s childhood with newspaper lining her winter gumboots or “Gertrude in the dairy room, / arranging flowers / and fruits / around her husband’s body.”

His moods range from praise of nature in “The filbert bush along my fence / blossoms all winter / and gives fruit,”  to ironic dialogue in “When someone asks for the truth, / for God’s sake, lie. Give them what they want.” Rhenisch defines language both as a locked cell and an open sky, as we are limited by our own vocabularies and talents as we struggle to communicate. Famous poets and thinkers are interwoven in his poems as he writes about poetry, searching for the right words that are as “shy deer.” He continues to surprise readers with fresh images, such as “Mountains and trees are also thin filaments of light.” I state that Harold Rhenisch will write another dozen interesting books and continue to give exciting readings.