Handwriting : Poems

Rating:
Summary: "?"
Review: Here in Canada the name Michael Ondaatje elicits homage, and his readers are a dedicated, faithful lot. This year, his 1987 book "In The Skin Of A Lion" was selected (by Canadians) as the book all Canadians should read, or in other words... "thee great Canadian novel" in a national project known as "Canada Reads."
Confession: I'm Canadian and I've never read any Ondaatje fiction. (GASP)!
But in honor of the Canada Reads project I bought "In The Skin Of A Lion" and just haven't read it yet. So, forgive me.
(And now, for the unforgivable)...
I thought I'd start off with delving into some of his poetry first.
Bad idea.
I picked up his "Handwriting" (poems written between 1993 and 1998, dealing mostly with a recollection of his homeland, Sri Lanka)... and I think I approached the book with as open or non-judgmental of an attitude as is possible.
But poem after poem I waited for some image or experience to provide meaning beyond the mere succession of words and snatches of unfinished thought, and nothing really worked for me. I finished the volume convinced that no reader can fully appreciate what is going on in these poems unless perhaps they happen to live within a ten mile radius of the events and scenes these poems describe.
Everything is in free verse, not a rhyme in the lot.
Note the following representative example, complete with a title nearly as long as the poem itself:

Driving with Dominic in the Southern Province We See Hints of the 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

Now come on, let's be serious, I could compose such a sequence in my own head in the time it takes to light a cigarette and blow out the match... and I don't even smoke!
I realize that Ondaatje fans will find those comments offensive, and it may be arguable that I am just too dense to appreciate Ondaatje's "delicacy and power" and "whimsical precision and authority" that the dustjacket promises to those that read beyond it... but, at the same time, I am not easily convinced of my own stupidity. I think I do know good poetry when I see it. And I do not judge Ondaatje AS A POET, especially since I have not read his other nine or ten published books of poetry, but I am singling out "Handwriting" as the only thing I've read so far. And I give it two stars for its occasional beauty:

The curve of the bridge
against her foot

her thin shadow falling
through slats
into water movement

Will this book keep me from reading that other stuff of his? Not at all. In fact, I look forward to finding his other work as memorable as this was forgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Ondaatje: one of the best living poets today
Review: Michael Ondaatje is a major poet. There are no two words about it. He brings his poetic vision and unique signature of lyricism again to words with his latest collection of poetry, 'Handwriting'. This is Ondaatje's latest book of poetry since The Cinnamon Peeler published in 1991.

'Handwriting' contains a collection of well-crafted poems reminding us that Ondaatje is undoubtedly among one of the best living poets today.

Most of the poems of this excellent anthology are set in Sri Lanka. Some images and references crafted by Ondaatje comes from Sri Lanka where he has ancestral roots. Similar to his classic novel, 'Anil's Ghost' Ondaatje demonstrates his intimate knowledge of the history, art, friends and recent events of Sri Lanka in this collection of poems.

For me, there is also a very personal appeal to the poems in this collection. As a person who grew up in Sri Lanka, I am familiar with places and historical references he brings into his works in 'Handwriting'. However, anyone without any knowledge of Sri Lanka could also understand and appreciate Ondaatje's poems as they have a universal appeal despite the fact he leaves the reader with place or location names such as Galapitigala Road, Mahaweli and Kataragama etc. Even when Ondaatje writes on specific locations or on historical facts he writes about life, love, war and death which has a universal appeal to any reader whether they have an understanding of locations, place names or historical nuances appearing here. Even if you don't have a personal knowledge of Sri Lanka's history or its culture you can still appreciate Ondaatje's poems.

Ondaatje is indeed very different to ancient poets of Sri Lanka who "wrote ... on rock and leaf / to celebrate the work of the day, / the shadow pleasures of the night." But we can still read and appreciate these ancient poems centuries after they were written "on rock and leaf". In 'Handwriting', Ondaatje's achieves similar goal; he shares his poetic gift with us like donating a precious gem that we can keep and appreciate as long as we live and pass on to the readers of next generation.

Rating:
Summary: Most of the time I think of Michael Ondaatje as a wry poet
Review: up there with Dante, Bob Dylan, Bob Kaufman,and Sappho in the tormented heaven of "secular love" (which means sacred love of the blasted and fallen forms of the human). From Billy the Kid to the Slaughter-house blues, this Shri/Lankan/Canadian kid has been churning up some notable lyrics drenched with locality and mongrel wit. I would just say, keep writing from those remote Canadian cabins, the world needs this poetry from small corners as much as it needs history-less blockbusters like Titanic or Cold Mountain or the latest lord-of-the-ring poet lariat cracking little lyric jokes like Bush 2 in Sunday morning emptiness. In a land where the snow-man poet is waking with a blood stained peignoir and a cup of jamaican coffee. Look away oh "Dixie Land" from this wry maker of lyrics who claims to have "no ideas but in things" or will to theory, while "hegemony takes a breathing spell" in the empire of bad narrative.