Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler. It is a collection of exquisitely crafted poems of delicacy and power--poems about love, landscape, and the sweep of history set in the poet's first home, Sri Lanka. The falling away of culture is juxtaposed with an individual's sense of loss, grief, and remembrance, as Ondaatje weaves a rich tapestry of images--the unburial of stone Buddhas, a family of stilt-walkers crossing a field, the pattern of teeth marks on skin drawn by a monk from memory.
And, like the poets who "wrote their stories on rock and leaf to celebrate the work of the day, the shadow pleasures of the night," in these poems Ondaatje writes of desire and longing, the curve of a bridge against a woman's foot, the figure of a man walking through a rainstorm to a tryst. Handwriting is a poetic achievement by a writer at the height of his creative powers. In it, we are reminded once again of Michael Ondaatje's unique artistry with language and of his stature as one of the finest poets writing today.
In the dry lands
every few miles, moving north, another roadside Ganesh
Straw figures on bamboo scaffolds to advertise a family of stilt-walkers
Men twenty feet high walking over fields crossing the thin road with their minimal arms and "lying legs"
A dance of tall men with the movement of prehistoric birds in practice before they alight
So men become gods in the small village of Ilukwewa
Ganesh in pink, in yellow, in elephant darkness His simplest shrine a drawing of him
lime chalk on a grey slate
All this glory preparing us for Anuradhapura
its night faith
A city with the lap and spell of a river
Families below trees around the heart of a fire
tributaries from the small villages of the dry zone
Circling the dagoba in a clockwise hum and chant, bowls of lit coal above their heads
whispering bare feet
Our flutter and drift
in the tow of this river
. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
MICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of seven novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and became a major motion picture that won nine Academy Awards, including Best Film; Anil's Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.
View titles by Michael Ondaatje
Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler. It is a collection of exquisitely crafted poems of delicacy and power--poems about love, landscape, and the sweep of history set in the poet's first home, Sri Lanka. The falling away of culture is juxtaposed with an individual's sense of loss, grief, and remembrance, as Ondaatje weaves a rich tapestry of images--the unburial of stone Buddhas, a family of stilt-walkers crossing a field, the pattern of teeth marks on skin drawn by a monk from memory.
And, like the poets who "wrote their stories on rock and leaf to celebrate the work of the day, the shadow pleasures of the night," in these poems Ondaatje writes of desire and longing, the curve of a bridge against a woman's foot, the figure of a man walking through a rainstorm to a tryst. Handwriting is a poetic achievement by a writer at the height of his creative powers. In it, we are reminded once again of Michael Ondaatje's unique artistry with language and of his stature as one of the finest poets writing today.
Excerpt
In the dry lands
every few miles, moving north, another roadside Ganesh
Straw figures on bamboo scaffolds to advertise a family of stilt-walkers
Men twenty feet high walking over fields crossing the thin road with their minimal arms and "lying legs"
A dance of tall men with the movement of prehistoric birds in practice before they alight
So men become gods in the small village of Ilukwewa
Ganesh in pink, in yellow, in elephant darkness His simplest shrine a drawing of him
lime chalk on a grey slate
All this glory preparing us for Anuradhapura
its night faith
A city with the lap and spell of a river
Families below trees around the heart of a fire
tributaries from the small villages of the dry zone
Circling the dagoba in a clockwise hum and chant, bowls of lit coal above their heads
whispering bare feet
Our flutter and drift
in the tow of this river
. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
MICHAEL ONDAATJE is the author of seven novels, a memoir, a nonfiction book on film, and several books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize in 1992 and became a major motion picture that won nine Academy Awards, including Best Film; Anil's Ghost won the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje now lives in Toronto.
View titles by Michael Ondaatje
