Out of the Interior: The Lost Country

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

The “interior” in the title of Rhenisch’s first published prose
work refers to both exterior and interior space: the vast reaches of the
valleys, rivers, farms, and orchards of British Columbia, and the
equally fertile thoughts and emotions of a young man exploring the
territories of mind.

Rhenisch, a well-respected B.C. poet, was born in Penticton, B.C. and
raised on an orchard in the Similkameen Valley. His father emigrated
from Germany, brought by his father into “this valley of green evening
night, where mosquitoes ride the wind for two thousand feet above the
river.” The land provides Rhenisch with the beauty of his language and
the poetry of his vision. Naramata, Penticton, Kelowna—the whole
unsculpted ripeness of the B.C. fruit country unfolds in the prose,
juxtaposed effectively with the tight, horrific culture of World War II
Europe, which his father and grandfather have imported.

These short pieces are clearly cathartic, but, as Rhenisch says in a
prologue, “cathartic in the specific sense of Greek tragedy, or paying
for the sins of our ancestors, or humankind trapped by a relentless fate
yet made human by that cage.” Rhenisch leaves us with a remarkable
feeling, both of loss and gain. Highly recommended for literature
collections.