Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje

Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje

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Zusammenfassung

a lover, who lay her fearless heart/light as a barn owl/against him all night'. Handwriting is an elegy for lost childhood, for a culture and language lost to the turmoil of history, but it is also a glimpse of the source of the writer's delicate, erotic, mysterious imagination.

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Handwriting by Michael Ondaatje

The poems in Handwriting are memories of Sri Lanka: the rituals and traditions, history and geography, the smells and tastes and colours of his first home. Here are sunless forests, cattle-bells, stilt-walkers 'with the movement of prehistoric birds'; a Buddha buried 'so roots/like fingers of a blind monk/spread for two hundred years over his face'; 'saffron and panic seed, lotus flowers, sandalwood; a lover, who lay her fearless heart/light as a barn owl/against him all night'. Handwriting is an elegy for lost childhood, for a culture and language lost to the turmoil of history, but it is also a glimpse of the source of the writer's delicate, erotic, mysterious imagination. By focussing on writing frankly about beautiful things, Ondaatje takes the poems beyond narrative to these simple, deeply sensual images - given to us in a language that is pared, cursive and exquisite.
The way his novels are truly poetic, Ondaatje's thrilling poems often read like exquisite, unwritten Ondaatje novels* Independent on Sunday *
Handwriting explores Sri Lankan history, geography, ceremonies and myths. It is crowded with scintillating images, such as a tightrope-walker caught in a power cut, beautiful colours and textures * New Statesman *
Michael Ondaatje defies the normal distinction between poet and novelist. His writing is consistently tuned to a visionary pitch -- Graham Swift
Ondaatje's poems are a joy, as all his writing is. The wonderful twists, painful and funny; the utterly individual touch and sumptuous wealth of language; they're all familiar, but as one would expect, they seem to keep getting better, more assured and sometimes more crazy -- W. S. Merwin
His poems read with the same whimsical precision and authority one finds in Ondaatje's prose. He is the most sensibly ironic writer I've read in years, and the most generously disposed. Would that all worlds were this deftly attended -- Robert Creeley
Michael Ondaatje is the author of seven novels; a memoir, Running in the Family; a non-fiction book on film, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film; and several books of poetry, including The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. The English Patient received the Booker Prize in 1992 and the Golden Man Booker in 2018, and was made into a film directed by Anthony Minghella. Anil’s Ghost was awarded the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Giller Prize and the Prix Médicis. Born in Sri Lanka, Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.
SKU Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13 9780224093804
ISBN 10 0224093800
Titel Handwriting
Autor Michael Ondaatje
Buchzustand Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart Paperback
Verlag Vintage Publishing
Erscheinungsjahr 2011-09-01
Seitenanzahl 80
Hinweis auf dem Einband Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis Nicht verfügbar