Harold Rhenisch’s poems balance the settler and Indigenous experiences of land and water in the Pacific Northwest
A collection of shanties laid out in couplets that move between English and Chinook Wawa, The Salmon Shanties celebrates a poetic tradition deeply rooted in the West Coast. Harold Rhenisch explores memories of people, place, and of returning home, speaking the land’s names as a music of its own and creating a series of aural maps.
Imbued with rhythms of Secwepemc grass dances, the colloquial chatter of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, and the spirit of poet and historian Charles Lillard, Rhenisch’s work sings of roots to the land lifted up by the sea into the sky—as if Ezra Pound had sung of Cascadia instead of Europe.
Do not be in Mareuil and Périgeux tonight; it is 1912 no longer.
We, the land’s singers, are walking the star road on the long way home
with the crickets of a July evening above Tuc el Nuit,
the burrowing owls of N’kmp,
and the long memories of the dwarf shrews of Nighthawk.
Breath cannot be denied. Poh cannot be forsaken. Ezra, shantie.
Authors
Related Organizations
- Pages
- 208
- Published in
- Canada
- Series
- Oskana Poetry & Poetics
Table of Contents
- Contents 13
- Bone Song 19
- Miserere 20
- Saying the Names Shanty 23
- Song for the Lovers 26
- Macadam Shanty 29
- Shanty for the Ceremony of Tears 32
- Wild Dog Shanty 35
- Look at You Shantie 37
- Round for the Mind of the World 40
- Truth and Reconciliation Shanty 42
- Hunger Shanty 46
- Wisdom Shanty 51
- Marble Mountain Song 55
- Weightless Shanty 56
- Shotgun Shanty 59
- Bella Ciao Shanty 65
- Beacon Rock Shanty 67
- Chilcotin Singalong 72
- Are we all not weaving our fingers out of grass and grass from our footsteps 75
- Saying It Backwards Shanty 79
- Salish Sea Shanty 82
- Prodigal Son Shanty 84
- Invasion Shanty 90
- Wet Season Splash 92
- Sugar Cane Fancy Tanse 93
- Cascadian Seduction Zone Tanse 95
- Little One Raga 99
- The Sqá a Step 107
- Snass Shanty 111
- Water Keeper Shanty 113
- Lelang Shanty 120
- Homecoming Shanty 126
- Smohallas Shanty 131
- A Whistle for the Dead 135
- The Minotaur of Sombrio Beach 137
- For a few years though young men like me were the story of this coast. 148
- Eternity Shanty 163
- Glossary of Chinook Wawa 171
- Notes The Ground of These Poems 175
- Acknowledgements 189
- Publishing new and established authors Oskana Poetry Poetics offers both contemporary poetry at its best and probing discussions of poetrys cultural role. 192
- Randy Lundy 192
- Series Editor 192
- Advisory Board 192
- Previous books in the series 192
- Measures of Astonishment Poets on Poetry 192
- The Long Walk 192
- Cloud Physics 192
- The House of Charlemagne 192
- Blackbird Song 192
- Forty-One Pages On Poetry Language and Wilderness 192
- Live Ones 192
- Field Notes for the Self 192
- Burden 192
- Red Obsidian 192
- Pitchblende 192
- Shifting Baseline Syndrome 192
- Synaptic 192
- The History Forest 192
- Dislocations 192
- Wrack Line 192
- Into the Continent 192
