Singing Against the Wind

Neil Querengesser taught in the Department of English, University of Calgary, Alberta.

Singing Against the Wind isa collection of 34 poems by Rienzi Crusz, six of which appeared in an earlier book, Elephant and Ice (The Porcupine’s Quill, 1980). Like much of his earlier poetry, the poems in the present volume explore the clashing values and physical differences of Canada and the poet’s native Sri Lanka. Certain obvious qualities of each country are reduced to caricatures that quickly become symbolic: Canada is snow, Sri Lanka, sun. These symbols serve as a mental landscape for Crusz and his “Sun-Man” persona, whose mind is often filled with images of the far south even as he stands barbecuing on his manicured suburban lawn:

But when he held up

Such ominous overtones are often countered by a quiet humor that can be seen in such poems as “Galle Road,” “The Disenchanted Child,” and “Walking in the Sun-Man’s Shoes.”

Having lived in Canada for 20 years, Crusz reflects through his poetry a lingering sense of alienation in his new land. His depictions of “white” Canada may serve as gentle pricks in the conscience of the majority, but when these are combined with depictions of contraries in Sri Lanka, the result hints at a vision that may in time embrace both North and South. Singing Against the Wind is a collection of aesthetically pleasing poems that offer a unique perspective of the problems faced by contemporary immigrants. The problem faced by Crusz is an old one, in many ways by now almost a cliché of Canadian literature (“And what’s so new / about this immigrant theme / that tattoos his work like a woodpecker?,” ask some of his more self-deprecating lines). Yet the final lines of “Conversations with God about My Present Whereabouts” attest with their balanced irony that the problem is also a perennial and intensely personal one:

in Ceylon’s deadly sun.