n Amirthanayagam titled, "What Happened to All My Life?" which begins, "What happened to the elephants?/the conversation goes on and on/What happened to the elephants/and Rangoon, where does the rhino roam?" (37). The poem speaks to a universal nostalgia for things past, but it also suggests the immigrant's melancholy at losing familiar cultural touchstones while seeking a better life in a strange, new world.
This same longing is expressed by Rienzi Crusz, who writes, "True, I have forgotten/the terraced symmetries/of the rice-paddy lands . . . But I am
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