Handwriting : Poems [Paperback]

Michael Ondaatje (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Picador; New Ed edition (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330393839
• ISBN-13: 978-0330393836
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,480,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Powerful evocation of Sri Lankan memories, August 5, 2000

By 

Allan Engelhardt "Just Another Reader" (Bedfordshire, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Handwriting: Poems (Hardcover)

At first I was annoyed with this volume of poetry. The images and the historical and litterary references employed are very specific to Sri Lanka. Without any background in Sri Lankan culture I found the poetry difficult bordering on the inaccessible.

However, as I persevered with the poetry I was slowly rewarded. It was like waking up from a dream, those first minutes in the morning when you are neither awake nor asleep, but living in a place that is somehow between the two worlds. The strenght of Ondaatje's language is such that it draws you in to the imagery and into the location he is creating and remembering. The result is not unlike a half-forgotten dream. You can almost remember that buried Buddha.

This is powerful poetry written by a sure hand. You will undoubtably benefit if you have a background knowledged of the culture and its physical and spiritual geography. Without this background it is difficult but ultimately rewarding reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Handwriting: Poems (Hardcover)

Ondaatje did a fabulous job with this collection of poems. It was the first of his that I ever read, and I was amazed. (I'm still amazed two weeks after I finished it.) Ondaatje has a style all his own, and I love it! The poetic language that seemed so pretentious to me in The English Patient held me spellbound.

I'm hooked.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and evocative, June 24, 2001

By 

Gina (Silicon Valley) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Handwriting: Poems (Paperback)

Beautiful, sensuous, with an occasional bite of acid. Like eating a mango on a hot summer day.

I don't like much contemporary poetry because I find it's more about provoking than evoking, more about shock value than beauty. I LOVED this volume. It is full of slow images and scents, sensual but not explicit. Ondaatje weaves Sanskrit and Tamil words and forms into the poems in such a way that you don't even care that you don't know exactly what he's talking about. "The brush of sandalwood along the collarbone/ Green dark silk/ A shoe left on the cadju tree terrace.." "The pepper vine shaken and shaken/like someone in love/Leaf patterns/saffron and panic seed/on the lower pillows/where their breath met..." What's a cadju tree? What's a panic seed? I don't know. I don't care- I see them anyway and am captured by the image, and this is what good poetry should do. I can't wait to read the next book.