In certain languages the
calligraphy celebrates
where you met the plum
blossom and moon by chance

- the dusk light, the cloud pattern,
recorded always in your heart
...
A condensary of time in the mountains
- your rain-swollen gate, a summer
scarce with human meeting.
Just bells from another village.

It will take at least a second reading to really sink into Ondaatje's poetry. The images are beautiful, but overall on this first reading, I felt most of the pieces jumped ship or changed direction so quickly I wasn't able to hold their thread.

I really liked this collection. There were some standout pieces, "Buried," "The Great Tree," "The Story," and "Wells" a simple poem that explores "the repeated pleasure of finite things." "The Nine Sentiments" also featured some incredible lines: "My path to this meeting was lit by lighting" / "I hold you the way astronomers draw constellations for each other in the markets of wisdom." Whoa.

True, Handwriting was not as enjoyable as The Cinnamon Peeler, but I felt the poems work together better to create a stronger, and more cohesive, theme: parampara, "from generation to generation." Ondaajte demonstrates an impressive lyricism as he delves into his ancestry and the effects of globalization on Sri Lanka.

"I was soothed then the way a plant would be, brushed with a wet cloth, as I reduced all thought into requests. Take care of this flower. Less light. Curtain.

As I wrote in my updates, it's very personal and localised. But cannot be rejected entirely. I enjoyed the first poem - A Gentleman Compares His Virtue to a Piece of Jade. The journey after had a layer over it that kept evading an emotional connect. Then the book ended with a poem called Last Ink and I was thankful I didn't give up on the book somewhere in the middle. Last Ink made the book totally worth it.

House on a red cliff

There is no mirror in Mirissa

the sea is in the leaves
the waves are in the palms

old languages in the arms
of the casuarina pine
parampara

parampara, from
generation to generation

The flamboyant a grandfather planted
having lived through fire
lifts itself over the roof

unframed

the house an open net

where the night concentrates
on a breath,
on a step
a thing or gesture
we cannot be attached to

The long, the short, the difficult minutes
of night

where even in darkness
there is no horizon without a tree

just a boat's light in the leaves

Last footstep before formlessness

~ from the book

Beautiful

Michael Ondaatje equals Elizabeth Bowen in terms of the sensuality of their work. The central section of this book, Nine Sentiments, is truly great poetry – the manipulation of language and the narrative are genuinely exciting to read. It could have been more consistent, but there are moments of true beauty in this book. It is like walking through a petrified forest, still quivering with life.

Quite lovely.

I love everything he writes.

Beautiful, lyrical meditations and musings on war, lost civilizations and ways of life, and the erotic/romantic, as well as poems about the poet's personal past history. All intermingle in a spiritual, graceful, balanced way that propels the reader forward but leaves enough mystery for repeated readings. This made me want to learn more about Sri Lanka's history, and I found the writing to be almost painterly in its imagery, deft and subtle without ever veering into cliche or being heavy-handed, and with the subjects of both war and love, I think that's immensely difficult. Very impressive and well worth having in your collection.

Perhaps I have to be in the right mood for a book of poetry to speak to Me. Or maybe his other book of poems,  The Cinnamon Peeler, was just much better than this one. I think I only "felt" or liked 3 passages in the entire book:

The women of Boralesgamuwa
uproot lotus in mid-river
skin reddened by floating pollen

Songs to celebrate the washing
of arms and bangles

The laughter when husbands are away

An uncaught prawn hiding by their feet

The three folds on their stomachs
considered a sign of beauty

They try out all their ankle bracelets
during these afternoons

and

For the first forty days a child
is given dreams of previous lives.
Journeys, winding paths,
a hundred small lessons
and then the past is erased

and

I want to die on your chest but not yet,
she wrote, sometime in the 13th century
of our love