Handwriting: Poems [Hardcover]

Michael Ondaatje (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 1999

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sumptuous, steamy, downright sexy: on the blush-o-meter Ondaatje scores a 10. Those who can't get enough of his melodious prose--most notably in The English Patient, which earned him the Booker Prize in 1992--will find the same lyrical genius in his verse. In his 10th collection, Ondaatje transports us to his childhood home of Sri Lanka. With strikingly sensuous imagery, he conjures a land of bangles, cattle bells, stilt-walkers, and a 1000-year-old buddha "buried in Anuradhapura earth, / eyes half closed, hands / in the gesture of meditation... roots / like the fingers of a blind monk / spread for two hundred years over his face." As the title suggests, Handwriting is an elegiac tribute to the ancients who in "wild cursive scripts... spent all their years / writing one good book"; whose "physical yearning / became permanent" and "desire became devotional." In his Sanskrit and Tamil love poem, "The Nine Sentiments," Ondaatje not only proves most definitively that music is the key to unlocking a reader's heart, but also argues for poetry's healing powers in times of strife:

The brush of sandalwood along a collarbone
Green dark silk
A shoe left
on the cadju tree terrace
these nights when "pools are
reduced by constant plungings"
Meanwhile a man's burning heart
his palate completely dry
on the Galapitigala Road
thinking there is water in that forest

Ondaatje's final poem, "Last Ink," explains why the need to preserve human experience through art is as instinctive as the desire to die in a lover's arms. Dealing with large-scale emotions and scenes of love and war, these are poems that strike to the heart. --Martha Silano, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

Ondaatje's first book of poetry or prose since his bestselling novel The English Patient (1992) offers Western readers knowingly attractive, nostalgic views of his native Sri Lanka. The poet playfully takes to the role of translator ("Aliganaya-'the embrace/ during an intoxicated walk'/ or 'sudden arousal/ while driving over speed bumps' ") in a not-quite-wry langourAa departure from the exuberance of earlier work. Generally forgoing the first person, and settling into a short, refined line, Ondaatje disappears into the role of an observer, most sucessfully in poems like "Driving with Dominic in the Southern Province We See Hints of a Circus": "The Tattered Hungarian Tent/ A man washing a trumpet/ at a roadside tap/ Children in the trees,/ one falling/ into the grip of another." At times, the self-conscious need to explain interrupts the flow of images, as when bathing women encounter "An uncaught prawn hiding by their feet/ The three folds on their stomachs/ considered a sign of beauty," and the poet's engagements with the politics and violence of Sri LankaA"there were goon squads from all sides"Acan seem forced. But the terse form seems to push the poet towards moments of lapidary beauty. Ultimately, these calmly seductive visions form a surprisingly coherent emotional autobiography, representing Ondaatje's finest work as a poet.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 78 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st Us Edition edition (March 2, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375405593
• ISBN-13: 978-0375405594
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,137,987 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.