I love michael andaatje(sp?) His words are always so...unique. I liked the structure of his novels a bit more, but this is one solid book o words!

A wonderful collection of Ondaatje's most resonant poems. Like his own speech, Ondaatje's verse feels accented with something exotic, so that even scrubby Eastern Ontario farmland finds a kind of narrative lushness. Filled with humour, tenderness and sensuality. The title piece is one of the most vividly olafactory and sexy love poems outside of Pablo Neruda.

Not as evocative as his Handwriting collection, except for some lines that were the magic I have come to expect from Ondaatje. But how highly could one think of a collection of poetry written about a man's mistress? Ugh men.

Ondaatje has a way with words that leaves you breathless.

Ondaatje floors me. His writing is like food for the hungry. These are messy, simmering, sexy words.
Particular favorites in this collection are Cabin; 2 a.m. The moonlight in the kitchen; ('The space in which we have dissolved - does it taste of us?'); I write about you; Speaking to you this hour.

Some of the most phenomenal poetry I've read in a long time. Ondaatje reaches the essence of an experience with distilled language that touches your soul.

These are wonderful poems, deft, fresh and surprising.

"The car carried him/racing the obvious moon/beating in the trees like a white bird."

"Imagine the rain/falling like white bees on the sidewalk."

"There is this light,/colorless, that falls on the warm/stretching brain of the bulb/that is dreaming avocado."

"We are in a cell of civilized magic./Stravinsky roars at breakfast,/our milk is powdered./Outside a May god/moves his paws to alter wind/to scatter shadows of tree and cloud."

"Tell me/all you know/about bamboo."

"Those things we don't know we love/we love harder"

A book of poems consisting of only one author, it's incredible to see how much the author really puts his efforts into what he loves doing. Usually, poem books consist of poems written by other authors but when I came across this book, I was surprised to find that a book with so many pages, was written by only one author and that is what makes this book so special. Poem lengths can vary from long and short and if I had to choose my favorite, it would have to be Walking to bell rock. Read it and you'll understand why I love it. That poem brings back memories and is pure. Pure of happiness and a sense of freedom.

I have always loved Ondaatje's "Elimination Dance" (in all of its many incarnations). Here I found plenty of other poems to love as well. Perhaps not all of them, but a high enough ratio that I was delighted.

A nice collection, most stunning is the unexpected "Elimination Dance (an intermision)" including a motley list such as:

"Those who are allergic to the sea

Men who shave off beards in stages, pausing to take photographs

Gentlemen who have placed a microphone beside a naked woman’s stomach after lunch and later, after slowing down the sound considerably, have sold these noises on the open market as whale songs

Those who have accidently stapled themselves

Those who have woken to find the wet footprints of a peacock across their kitchen floor

Anyone whose knees have been ruined as a result of performing sexual acts in elevators

Those who have used the following techniques of seduction:
-small talk at a falconry convention
-underlining suggestive phrases in the prefaces of Joseph Conrad"




Funny stuff.

Also of note are the following excerpts:

“He loves too, as she knows, the body of rivers. Provide him with a river or a creek and he will walk along it. Will step off and sink to his waist, the sound of water and rock encasing him in solitude.” —from “Escarpment”

and this quote:
“So this midnight choir.” (forget which poem/page)

Though my experience with Ondaatje's prose wasn't as dazzling as I expected it to be, his poetry reads much more naturally and smoothly. There is a very strong vocal component to these poems, as if by reading them in your head you are simultaneously being read to in a soothing voice. The title poem, "The Cinnamon Peeler", was my introduction to Ondaatje in high school, and I still remember how wonderful it sounded when a classmate read it out loud. Ondaatje's writing has that kind of quality to it as a whole, and while in prose this feels somehow out of place and a bit awkward, for me personally, then his poetry is natural and almost breezy in quality, engaging and engulfing its reader.

Some jewels emerge from these pages. His "Elimination Dance" in the middle of the book is both humorous and startlingly human.