Handwriting - Paperback

by Michael Ondaatje (Author)

"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.

Front Jacket

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.

Back Jacket

The exquisite poems collected in Handwriting -- Michael Ondaatje's first book of new poems since The Cinnamon Peeler -- recall "the vista of a life". Drawing on history, mythology, landscape, and personal memories of Sri Lank, Ondaatje weaves a rich tapestry of images that evoke desire for -- and anguish over -- scents and gestures of lost loves, homes, and language. The verses, at turns spare and luminous, demonstrate the poet's unique artistry as he contemplates "the mirror world of art" in a time before books, when "handwriting occurred on waves, / on leaves, the scripts of smoke", recounts medieval monks "burying the Buddha in stone" amid the battle fire of war, 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.

Author Biography

Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.