Poetry
Beatitudes of Ice: Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 1995.
Toronto: Elvin Hill Pub., 2008.
Publisher’s Synopsis
Here is a work characterized by brilliant images, fine control of form, and a nimble touch with sound and language, displaying a sensibility in which the contraries of light and dark, elephant and ice, home and exile, don’t simply clash but achieve a playful coexistence, and laughter [triumphs] over despair.
Poetry
Elephant and Ice
Erin, Ont.: Porcupine’s Quill, 1980.
Limited ed. of 500 copies.
Poetry
Enough to be Mortal Now: Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 2009.
PS8555 .R87 E56 2009
Publisher’s Synopsis
In this volume … Crusz’s preoccupations have not substantially changed, but his perspectives have. Deeply conscious of time and place, now, he brings here the broader existential concerns of love, hope, and mortality, and tragedy and despair. Nature provides a backdrop for inspiration and tranquility.
Poetry
Flesh and Thorn
Drawings by Virgil Burnett.
Stratford, Ont.: Pasdeloup Press, 1974.
Limited ed. of 500 copies.
Poetry
Gambolling with the Divine
Toronto: TSAR, 2003.
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
In his tenth collection of poetry, Rienzi Crusz attempts to track and document his faltering human journey towards God and the Divine. Reflecting a devotional tradition professionally catholic as well as South Asian (bhakti), these poems are witness to a personal love of God and the frailty of the human loves. Gambolling with the Divine is the Augustinian confessions retold with brilliantly vivid Sri Lankan and Canadian variations. As always, the work bears ample evidence of Crusz’s unerring gift for language and brilliant image.
Poetry
How to Dance in this Rarefied Air: Poems
Introduction by Linda Hutcheon.
Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2017.
PS8555 .R87 H69 2017
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
How to Dance in this Rarefied Air offers select and new poems setting out his journey as a poet writing in Canada since the 1970s. It offers a poetics fashioned to meet the demands of writing on the cusp between two worlds, hence the songs of exile, the idioms of defiance and survival, a poetry fashioned to meet the existential concerns of the immigrant encounter. But Crusz has gone beyond the theme of mere displacement, by confronting themes such as love, politics, nature, God, and poetics itself. And always there remains the self-conscious, bordering on the postmodern, and, above all, a delightful irony.
Poetry
Insurgent Rain: Selected Poems
Selected and introduced by Chelva Kanaganayakam.
Toronto: TSAR, 1997.
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
A collection of Crusz’s most important poems written over two decades [1974-1996].
Poetry
Lord of the Mountain: The Sardiel Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 1999.
Poetry
Still Close to the Raven
Toronto: TSAR, 1989.
Waterloo, Ont.: Elvin Hill Pub., 2008. (2nd ed.)
Poetry
A Time for Loving
Toronto: TSAR, 1986.
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Blackburn, Di Gan . “Rienzi Crusz.” In Asian American Poets: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Guiyou Huang, [89]-91. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
PS153 .A84 A826 2002
Chilana, Rajwant Singh. “Rienzi Crusz.” In South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bio-Bibliographical Study. Surrey, BC: Asian Publications, 2017, 263.
Z1376 .S68 C45 2017
Kananganayakam, Chelva. Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz. Toronto: TSAR, 1997.
PS85555 .R87 Z72 1997
Kandiuk, Mary. “Rienzi Crusz.” In Caribbean and South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bibliography of Their Works and of English-language Criticism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007, 41-44.
PS8089.5 .C37 K36 2007
Mukherjee, Arun. “The poetry of Rienzi Crusz: Songs of an Immigrant.” In Oppositional Aesthetics: Readings from a Hyphenated Space. Toronto: TSAR, 1994, 133-143.
PS8089.5 .M5 M85 1994
Links
Publisher Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR)