The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems

by Michael Ondaatje

Overview

Michael Ondaatje's new selected poems, The Cinnamon Peeler, brings together poems written between 1963 and 1990, including work from his most recent collection, Secular Love. These poems bear witness to the extraordinary gifts that have won high praise for this truly original poet and novelist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679779131
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/28/1997
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	882,623
Product dimensions:	5.14(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Michael Ondaatje is the author of three previous novels, a memoir and eleven books of poetry. His novel The English Patient won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he moved to Canada in 1962 and now lives in Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

TRANSLATIONS OF MY POSTCARDS

the peacock means order the fighting kangaroos mean madness the oasis means I have struck water

positioning of the stamp — the despot’s head horizontal, or ‘mounted policemen’,
mean political danger

the false date means I
am not where I should be

when I speak of the weather
I mean business

a blank postcard says
I am in the wilderness

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Ondaatje's poems read with the same whimsical precision and authority one finds in his 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

"Ondaatje is one of the country's best, a formidable craftsman and artist."
--The Whig-Standard, Kingston

"You feel yourself deep inside his mind and heart, and from there you feel the poem dance."
--Sharon Olds

From the Publisher