"The mother tongue
a bubble caught in my beak
releasing the air
of a language"

This line along with many others stood out to me. He writes beautifully and it's just so precise. I'll be going back to this collection for many years to come.

Okay, I can understand why people give out about the poet Ondaatje! Some of this is quite laboured. But again, some is quite lovely.

Big metaphors, silly similes, occasionally.

I liked the stuff about his family, now that I've read his "autobiography." There's a lot of extra detail in it.

Again, I prefer the poetry interspersed with prose in Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter. More... grounded. But I liked quite a lot of this more than I imagined I would.

I hardly know what to say.

Something I adored and simultaneously felt annoyed by was how poetic Michael Oondatje's novels are. I would get carried away by his amazing precision and beautiful choice for words, but I always felt that his poetic tangents got in the way of the story. Now that I've actually read his poetry, I'm taken aback by just how narrative-esque his poetry is, and yet I'm not surprised. Each section is a condensed novel, except, each poem is a separate moment, a moment you seem to remember having participated in yourself, as an outside viewer.

I love the word "moon" and no matter what I am reading, I always circle the word if it's written down. I'm pretty sure I circled the word "moon" at least 150 times during this entire book. And I'm not even complaining.

Favorites: "Burning Hills", "Country Night", "Sallie Chisum / Last Words on Billy the Kid. 4 a.m." and "The Cinnamon Peeler"

very nearly a 2.5 star book, unfortunately.

adored the first 20 pages and the final set of poems, but the middle? i felt that the middle poems lacked all the gentle heart and tenderness i usually expect from ondaatje. some poems just didn't resound at all, which completely took away from the poems that did. sometimes, i was more enthralled by the epigraphs than the poems that followed.

his poetry is at its best when you can really feel the thrum of longing for his beloved. sometimes it's the domestic that brings the rush of feeling, not the heavy, pretty metaphors.

for future reference, here are the bops:
the diverse causes
a house divided
her house
a stolen biography
red accordion
escarpment

the more i read of Ondaatje the more i like him. he writes a perfect balance between poetry and prose that's very palpable and pleasurable to read; the writing on the back of this book crystalizes it:

"If Michael Ondaatje's novels have the compression and imagistic power of poetry, his poems often read like narratives that have been pared down to their mysterious essence."

I really enjoy the content of his poetry too. It's got a kind of wilderness solitude wandering beer cigarette, wet dog smell to it.

The poem 'The Cinnamon Peeler's Daughter' is one of my favourite poems. And it was just featured in the deeply moving movie Away From Her.

Some thoughts and expressions really stuck with me.

A house as a place you can navigate in the dark

"we have love and the god outside"

"I have lost the feather of poetry"

Skin Boat

breaking a poem into many poem pieces, like in Rock Bottom

"Light," the whole poem
- These are the fragments I have of them , tonight
in this storm

Nice re-read. Ondaatje's good at evoking place and time. He's a chronicler of moments.

Book #1 Read for Asian American and Pacific Islander Month, May 2024.

“Time collapses. The years, the intricate knowledge now of each other makes love” (from “Red Accordion-An Immigrant Song”, 181).

“We love things which disappear” (“Proust in the Waters”, 186).

I cannot believe that it’s only now in my older age that I am finally reading the poetry of Michael Ondaatje, who is on the list of my top 3-5 writers I can always read.

This gorgeous collection, “The Cinnamon Peeler” is another of Ondaatje’s signature works that explores time, space, countries and cities, and the geography of humanity. He also incorporates music, especially jazz to heighten the senses into a world where this musical form also weaves in and out often creating a deeply atmospheric reading experience.

This collection is comprised of selections from other collections; “There’s a Trick with a knife I’m Learning to Do”; “Elimination Dance”; and “Secular Love”.

Some standouts with some of the most gorgeous, beautiful lines ever:

“The Diverse Clauses”- “I turn a page careful not to break the rhythms of your sleeping head on my hip, watch the moving under your eyelid that turns like fire, and we have love” (9).

“The Time Around Scars”- “I would meet you now and I would wish with this scar to have been given with all the love that never between us” (15).

“Tin Roof”- “How do we discuss the education of children? Teach them to be romantics to veer towards the sentimental?” (119)

“Rock Bottom/The desire under the Elms Motel”- “This hour it is not your body I want but your quiet company” (145).

“In a Yellow Room” (for jazz performer Fats Waller)- “The hidden authors on their two-hour taxi ride out of Harlem to Brooklyn and back again to Harlem, the night smells yells overhead from the streets they passed” (184).

Reading these poems takes me to a place where the elusive search for love is always ever-present. Ondaatje’s poems often veer into the surreal and the melancholy, with a broken heart that never seems to be quite mended. It’s quite beautiful, strange, and irresistible.

As much as I have loved MO's fiction, after reading this volume of poetry I have concluded that this is where his writing really shines, like river rocks flashing in the current.

What on earth did I do with this book? I remember being quite inspired by it, having slips of paper in many pages for reference.

A second reading, after 20 years. I was less besotted this time around, but it’s still excellent, lively stuff. Once, long ago, I taped a newspaper photo of a young, grinning, handsome and shirtless Ondaatje to the cover of a writing journal—and this time around I sensed that youthful, gentlemanly-masculine bravado even more (for better or worse). Less polished, more bravado, still plenty to admire.