Synopses & Reviews
Handwriting is Michael Ondaatje's first new book of poetry since
The Cinnamon Peeler. It is a collection of exquisitely crafted poems of delicacy and power--poems about love, landscape, and the sweep of history set in the poet's first home, Sri Lanka. The falling away of culture is juxtaposed with an individual's sense of loss, grief, and remembrance, as Ondaatje weaves a rich tapestry of images--the unburial of stone Buddhas, a family of stilt-walkers crossing a field, the pattern of teeth marks on skin drawn by a monk from memory.And, like the poets who "wrote their stories on rock and leaf / to celebrate the work of the day, / the shadow pleasures of the night," in these poems Ondaatje writes of desire and longing, the curve of a bridge against a woman's foot, the figure of a man walking through a rainstorm to a tryst. Handwriting is a poetic achievement by a writer at the height of his creative powers. In it, we are reminded once again of Michael Ondaatje's unique artistry with language and of his stature as one of the finest poets writing today.
Synopsis
"Tumultuous, vibrant, tragic and over too soon." --
NewsdayHandwriting 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.
Synopsis
The work of this “eminent, still-wild spirit of Central Europe” (
Publishers Weekly) continues to electrify. In
The Blue Tower, language is remade with tenderness and abandon: “Rommel was kissing heavens dainty hands and yet / from his airplane above the Sahara my uncle / Rafko Perhauc still blew him to bits.” There is an effervescence and a sense of freedom to Tomaž Salamuns poetry that has made him an inspiration to successive generations of American poets, “a poetic bridge between old European roots and the American adventure” (Associated Press). Trivial and monumental, beautiful and grotesque, healing, ferocious, mad:
The Blue Tower is an essential volume.
Synopsis
A new collection by the internationally acclaimed Slovenian poet
About the Author
Tomaž Šalamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb. He has published over thirty books of poetry and frequently teaches at American universities, including Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Texas.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
The Bride Wins Both Times 1
Grischas Fez 2
Honey and Holofernes 4
Trans-Siberia 6
San Pietro a Cascia with Masaccio 7
Diran Adebayo 8
We Build a Barn and Read Readers Digest 9
Strangling in Dreams 10
All the Instruments Have Collapsed 11
Waiting on Šaranoviˇc Street 12
So We Dont Lose Our Virginity 13
Where Is the Little Wall From 15
Strange Dreams 16
At Baroness Beatrice Monti della Corte von Rezzoris 17
“I Dont Like Proust, He Didnt Have Enough Sex,” Diran Says 19
Pharaohs and Kings, Kassel, Paris 20
Taverna 21
Breakfast with My Hostess in Aldeborough 22
Skaters 24
Prada, Montevarchi, Before Cézanne 26
Thats How Many Mighty Heaven Will Endure 27
Title Still Pending 28
Donnini 29
Florenza 30
Persia 31
Until Pessoa Nothing 32
Scrubbed Slab, Dark Screen 34
A Word to the Hunters 35
The Tip Grows On Before the Step 36
La Torre, Celan 37
The Sirens 39
Ivo Štandeker 40
An Hour 41
San Juan de la Cruz Rolled in the Snow 44
Rites and the Membrane 45
Santa Rita 47
Sounds Near Pistoletto 49
The Gentleman Is a Bit Inclined to Disorder 53
Marais 56
Lindos 57
White Hash, Black Weed 58
The Slave 61
Lime Tree 63
Flight 66
Ptuj 67
Sugar 68
Athos 69
Letter from Kevin Holden 70
The Flight into the Land of Egypt 73
The Soul Murders the Tile 76
Brother 78
Pleasure 79
The Blister 80
Reminding Mankind of Yourself with a Whip 82
Chiunque Giunge le Mani 84