3.5
Handwriting
ByPublisher Description
"Tumultuous, vibrant, tragic and over too soon." --Newsday
Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler. The exquisite poems collected here draw on history, mythology, landscape, and personal memories to weave a rich tapestry of images that reveal the longing for--and expose the anguish over--lost loves, homes, and language, as the poet contemplates scents and gestures and evokes a time when "handwriting occurred on waves, / on leaves, the scripts of smoke" and remembers a woman's "laughter with its / intake of breath. Uhh huh."
Crafted with lyrical delicacy and seductive power, Handwriting reminds us of Michael Ondaatje's stature as one of the finest poets writing today.
Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler. The exquisite poems collected here draw on history, mythology, landscape, and personal memories to weave a rich tapestry of images that reveal the longing for--and expose the anguish over--lost loves, homes, and language, as the poet contemplates scents and gestures and evokes a time when "handwriting occurred on waves, / on leaves, the scripts of smoke" and remembers a woman's "laughter with its / intake of breath. Uhh huh."
Crafted with lyrical delicacy and seductive power, Handwriting reminds us of Michael Ondaatje's stature as one of the finest poets writing today.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesHandwriting Reviews
3.5
“What a beautiful book of poems.”
“I expected.....more? after reading one of my favorites The English Patient.
annotations:
(from The Distance of a Shout)
There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.
Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke,
(from Buried)
To be buried in times of war,
in harsh weather, in the monsoon
of knives and stakes.
carrying the faith of a temple
during political crisis
away in their arms.
Hiding
the gestures of the Buddha.
Above ground, massacre and race.
A heart silenced.
The tongue removed.
The human body merged into burnign tire.
Mud glaring back
into a stare.
(from The Brother Thief)
Dark peace,
like a cave of water
(from The Nine Sentiments)
Love arrives and dies in all disguises
and we fear to move
because of old darknesses
or childhood danger
(from Death at Kataragama)
Distance is always clearer...I bend too close to the page to get nearer to what is being understood.
For a blue hand that contains no touch or desire in it for another.
bones that protect the heart and breath in battle, during love beside another....The place bodies meet is the place of escape.”
“Michael Ondaatje proves himself as my favourite author time and time again. His writing is so real you can taste it on your tongue! Especially if you’ve ever been to Sri Lanka/are Sri Lankan - all six senses experience this. And I don’t even think I’m that well versed in poetry at all - I know so little about it in a critical sense, but this did everything I’d expect good poetry to do.
“There was no book of the forest,
no book of the sea, but these
are the places people died.
Handwriting occurred on waves,
on leaves, the scripts of smoke
a sign on a bridge along the Mahaweli River.
A gradual acceptance of this new language.”
- From “The Distance of a Shout””
About Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Canada in 1962. He lives in Toronto.
Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler, The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Running in the Family, Coming through Slaughter, and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid are available in Vintage paperback.
Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler, The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Running in the Family, Coming through Slaughter, and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid are available in Vintage paperback.
Other books by Michael Ondaatje
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