Handwriting - Softcover

Ondaatje, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330393839 ISBN 13: 9780330393836

Publisher: Picador, 2000

Synopsis

Exquisitely crafted, these are poems about love, history and landscape that transport us with breathtaking imagery to the poet's first home, Sri Lanka.

'The way his novels are truly poetic, Ondaatje's thrilling poems often read like exquisite, unwritten Ondaatje novels' Independent on Sunday

'Handwriting explores Sri Lankan history, geography, ceremonies and myths. It is crowded with scintillating images, such as a tightrope-walker caught in a power cut, beautiful colours and textures' New Statesman & Society

'A set of intimate, gentle poems, transcribing the history, landscape and traditions of Ceylon' The Times

About this title

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 a Booker in 1992--will find the same lyrical genius in his verse. In this 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 a 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 elegaic tribute to the ancients who in "wild cursive scripts...spent all their years / writing one good book" only to be killed for toasting "the work of the day / the shadow pleasures of night...while there was war to celebrate." 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 the healing powers of poetry 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 the forest

The 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

Review:

"Michael Ondaatje defies the normal distinction between poet and novelist. His writing is consistently tuned to a visionary pitch." --Graham Swift "His thrilling poems read like exquisite, unwritten Ondaatje novels." --"The Independent ""A breathtaking collection.-- If you're going to buy one book this year, buy this one. Ten years from now you'll still be reading it with pleasure." --Sam Solecki, "Books in Canada"

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0330393839
• ISBN 13: 9780330393836
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88