Handwriting

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta. He is
the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Michael Ondaatje has written poems about Sri Lanka before, as well as a
full-length memoir, Running in the Family (1993). His latest poetry
collection is entirely about his birth country, and it is a moving and
elegant collection. The elegance does not preclude the description of
horrors, for Sri Lanka has had a violent history. A recurring theme is
preserving sacred objects by burying them in the jungle.

Ondaatje gives a powerful image of place in this work, but it is not a
mere travelogue: the poems are spare and the atmosphere is essential to
his themes and effects. He is influenced by Sanskrit and Tamil love
poems, especially in “The Nine Sentiments,” a fine sequence of poems
that treat the nine sentiments of love as they were defined in Indian
poetry. The best poems are probably “The Story,” a tale as
postmodern as (paradoxically) The Arabian Nights; “Death at
Kataragama,” in which the poet (like Keats before him) wishes to enter
the body of a bird (a woodpecker for Ondaatje, a sparrow for Keats); and
“Last Ink,” a love poem in which Ondaatje uses imagery of
calligraphy with exquisite skill and a steady hand. Other poetry
deserving praise includes “Buried” and “Buried 2,” the poems
about the burial of sacred relics.

The audiotape provides a fine companion to the written text. Ondaatje
is an outstanding performer of his own work.