my favorite last line in a poem that shouldn't work, but does? "We're all alone." damn.

Eponymous poem the pearl of the anthology.

I'm willing to make a bet that if you read this you will cry. I was given this book by a hot guy from a philosophy class in college and I never gave it back to him. The guilt ate me up because the book was amazing and there was one particular poem that stabbed me in my soul, it was too good of a book for me just to steal so I had to pay it forward and I gave it to someone else who also never gave it back that I no longer talk to. Worst mistake of my life. I would buy a replacement but now they're like $35 in Canada. Buy this book- or steal it- and don't let it go.

I had high expectations coming into this book of poems by Ondaatje. The only other work that I had read from him was The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, which was recommended to me by my independent study teacher my senior year of high school. I thank him so much for introducing me to Ondaatje, because I ate that book up within less than a day, and I knew that if Ondaatje could do that with Billy the Kid then he could do it in all his other works too, including The Cinnamon Peeler.

He did just that.

Unlike Billy the Kid, The Cinnamon Peeler was simply a book of poetry. The former was more of a book of prose and poetry that created a story (what would that be called? I’m not entirely sure). Nonetheless, Ondaatje was able to surprise me yet again with his command of the English language. There were moments where I just had to stop and go “damn”.

Ondaatje uses his words in a way that not only makes you sit back and think for a moment, relating everything he has said to yourself and your life experience, but he also makes you wonder how a person could have came up with a few simple words, put them together, and made them so beautiful. I will share with you guys a stanza from one of the poems that caught my eye and made me revel at Ondaatje’s mastery. It is from his poem, Rainy Night Talk:

Here’s to the long legs
driving home
in more and more rain
weaving like a one-sided
lonely conversation
over the mountains

His words are gorgeous. My favorite poem out of the rest was Claude Glass, and I highly recommend that anyone interested in poetry to try him out. I don’t know many other people who are familiar with him (even my poetry professor did not recognize him), and if anyone else is familiar with him I ask that you speak up and spread the word!

Even if you are not that much of a poetry person, check him out. He may change your mind about poetry.

I am not sure that this is an admission, or a boast: I am, when it comes to poetry, a pure philistine. Simply put, I don't see the point of poetry. Or, put elsewise, at this point in the twenty-first century, I don't see what purpose poetry serves that prose cannot serve. So I have pretty much eschewed verse for the best part of the past thirty years or so. That being said...

I have found during this Covid Moment that my reading habits have gone askew; I can't seem to easily make time or space to concentrate on reading. So finding this volume en route to the freebox at work, I decided it may well be time to delve into the poems of my favorite living author. And I found the experience to be rewarding. It answers a question I had never thought to ask: why has Michael Ondaatje never written short stories? His poems function very much as brief, lapidary short stories, and form a sort of connective tissue which ties together such works as  In the Skin of a Lion,  the Collected Works of Billy the Kid,  Coming Through Slaughter, and  Running in the Family. When I venture on any as yet inchoate project of reading through the (prose) works of Michael Ondaatje, this will come in as a handy bit of reference material.

It's Ondaatje, so of course it is good. But it was my least favorite of his poetic works.

My favorite collection by Ondaatje

There are some truly beautiful poems in the Cinnamon Peeler, of which my favorite is “The Time Around Scars,” one of the weirdest love poems you’ll ever read. The rest covers topics as varied as family, childhood, friendship, dreams, and fantasy. Highly recommended!

"He is not a lost drunk / like his father or his friend, can / he says, stop on a dime, and he can / he could because even now, now in / this brilliant darkness where / grass has lost its colour and it's all / fucking Yeats and moonlight, he knows / this colourless grass is making his bare feet green / for it is the hour of magic / which no matter what sadness / leaves him grinning."

didn't like poetry until i read this book

Not sure how to rate, but definitely really beautiful collection. I will be returning to this to some of my favourite poems.

"high on poetry and mountains."

I don't have much experience with poetry, I haven't read enough to know what I'm talking about. But I love finding myself in the midst of a block of words, and judging by that alone I can't recommend this book enough. I have a feeling I would prefer his other book more.

It is no secret that I adore Ondaatje's prose and how he creates a raw kaleidoscope of the real through the master craft of his writing. This book of poems is no exception to that same recipe.

I borrowed this from the library, I need to own my own copy.

"I write about you
as if I own you
which I do not
As you can say nothing
this is mine"

'The Cinnamon Peeler' is one of the loveliest, most sensual poems I've read.