Waiting for Saskatchewan

by Fred Wah

Wah interprets memory--a journey to China and Japan, his father's experience as a Chinese immigrant in small Canadian towns, images from childhood--to locate the influence of genealogy. The procession of narrative reveals Wah's own attempts to find "the relief of exotic identity.""Fred Wah searches for his father within various literary forms and embraces. This is a beautiful book and we are in the muscle and limbs of rough cut clear language--live bright fish slapping on the table."--Michael Ondaatje

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 1985

About the author

Fred Wah has been involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. Recent books are the biofiction Diamond Grill (1996), Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity (2000), a collection of essays, and Sentenced to Light (2008), a collection of poetic image/text projects. He splits his time between the Kootenays in southeastern B.C. and Vancouver.

Reviews

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully intense. Written like an ode to his parents, primarily his late Father. A fast flowing stream of consciousness from Mr. Wah's memories.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ohhh right from the first poem, I was intrigued by Fred Wah's style and perspective. This collection is an exploration of memory, loss, the sort of in-between identity formation of Chinese immigrants in the Canadian prairies and folks of mixed heritage, as well as the lines that tie people and places together.

"Don't let valour go with the name chiefly
in the accumulated value of the family a prize
within the state strength is bondless unless
the heart carries this calculated boldness outside
to exude many such indications about ourselves
such as the relative colour inside of me or inside of you."

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waiting for saskatchewan
and the origins grandparents countries places converged
europe asia railroads carpenters nailed grain elevators
Swift Current my grandmother in her house
he built on the street
and him his cafes namely the "Elite" on Center
looked straight ahead Saskatchewan points to it
Erickson Wah Trimble houses train station tracks
arrowed into downtown fine clay dirt prairies wind waiting
for Saskatchewan to appear for me again over the edge
horses led to the huge sky the weight and colour of it
over the mountains as if the mass owed me such appearance
against the hard edge of it sits on my forhead
as the most political place I know these places these strips
laid beyond horizon for eyesight the city so I won't have to go
near it as origin town flatness appears later in my stomach why
why on earth would they land in such a place
mass of pleistocene
sediment plate wedge
arrow sky beak horizon still waiting for that
I want it back, wait in this snowblown winter night
for that latitude of itself its own largeness
my body to get complete
it still owes me, it does

- pg. 3

* * *

the grandfather father lineal
grampa's smile
your walk his
smile
the grampa eyes twinkle
yours serious
my shoulders
his watch
your ring
him thinking me ahead of him
my own self's others' know it
think "eight spot" and take
a chance

lineal
face, body's
things
a hemi-
sphere

- pg. 12

* * *

The kids come home in the rain from a day in the car at
school music and all the things going on inside their heads
figure out a network for living to live in front of the voice
and talk to each other at the same time duplex model
modulate and play off the days around for seventy-five years.

- pg. 21

* * *

Aug 1
Over the Pacific between Honolulu and Japan. Dreamt last
night about a poem of me sitting on a bus-stop bench in
L.A. but of course I couldn't remember it this morning,
the poem that is. Just now while napping on the plane I
dreamt of the words I missed but even now I can't remember
them.

Thought of making part of the book "the" Family can be known
by initial as in J and E and Lh bu anyone else by full
name could mean group caste imprint exotic typology
genetic histories name language carries also later I get a
small bloodstone chop with schwa for my sign others choose
personal designs varietal identity, definition, red ink, lucky
green, a spot, either on the body or not

- pg. 33

* * *

Friday the 20th August in Beijing
Touring the city. Lotus fields everywhere. Look at the hats
they wear. Everything happiness and longevity.


At the Summer palace the peach

the symbol of "lucre"

each picture different

from the classics

5,000 - no repetition

- pg. 54

* * *

Line going deep into the lake or flung out onto the surface glaze river current, layers of darkness, invisible fish. You would look at me with serious brown eyes sometimes like I was crazy when I caught a fish and then give your own mad laugh. Something got to you fishing in the Columbia River at Trail, after work, along the rocks, swift-flowing mind emptying, maybe. Or in a creek at Meadow on a Sunday afternoon picnic, cousins and uncles, a ball game. At Apex you driving the road in the touquoise Ford looking for us fishing along the slow meandering of Cottonwood Creek. You without me at Trout Lake. Me without you below the C.P.R. tracks below Granite Road on the way out of town or jigging for suckers near the boathouses with the old Chinaman. When I fish now sometimes I feel like I'm you, water, glassy gaze, vertical, invisible layers, the line, disappearing.

- Elite 6, pg. 66

* * *

I try talking to you in this near-September air after I water
the dry spots out of the lawn, morning sunny and clear
the air coming to this for months ahead, almost, your
death-month, turning the flowers, even those huckleberries
I picked yesterday had thoughts of the frost ahead high in
the mountains, such simple weather bu something more
primitive here pictures of the kids each year on the first day
of school in front of the flowers in their new clothes, ahead,
you too and my mind working over the connections, you're
laughing, skeptical, like when I told you they used hot
water to make the ice at the arena because it steams and
you just about believed it because I did, my heart shoots
into the memory of that actual mouths-and-eyes-talking
dialogue, weather is memory every time I wonder if you
ever really listened to the songs on the Wurlitzer in the
cafe, particularly on a quiet winter Sunday afternoon, the
words anytime your mind roaming ahead and behind like
mine the little shots at living each day all the things air
carries for thinking like that.

Music, I try to think of the words to Autumn Leaves, Love
Letters in the Sand

- Father/Mother Haibun #3, pg. 77

[Correy Baldwin]

For whatever reason, postmodern Canadian prairie poetry was my entry point into poetry in general. But where once I found it exciting, whenever I return to it now I tend to find it quite difficult. (I do this to myself sometimes when I'm feeling homesick, for better or for worse.)

I found Wah to be occasionally opaque, but also occasionally lyrical and even tender. I found the "Grasp the Sparrow's Tail" sequence, in which he "sees" his recently deceased father everywhere while on a trip to China, to be quite moving.

For this is not really a book about Saskatchewan, but about coming to terms with losing a parent. And I appreciated his circling around the idea of legacy and inheritance while thinking about his father's death, and his own fatherhood:

my father hurt-
ing at the table
sitting hurting
at suppertime
deep inside very
far down inside
because I can't stand the ginger
in the beef and greens
he cooked for us tonight
and years later tonight
that look on his face
appears now on mine
my children
my food
their food
my father
their father
me mine
/the/ father
very far
very very far
inside

[berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's only a few times I've poetry this poetic. I came across Fred Wah whilst searching for a poetry collection to write my semester-end paper on, and I think I was meant to find this just like how Fred Wah was meant to write this.

[Jessica Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

"and the origins grandparents countries places converged europe asia railroads carpenters nailed grain elevators Swift Current my grandmother in her house
he built on the street
and him his cafes namely the “Elite” on Center
looked straight ahead Saskatchewan points to it"

the fluidity of the language—how does he do it?

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Music and hyphenated identity in what may well be Wah's best work.