Review by Booklist Review
These poems, gleaned from Ondaajte's work over the last 20 years, confirm his reputation as a significant, highly original poet. His themes include nature and civilization, the relationship of life and art, friendship and love, and all those things that separate friends and lovers. Ondaajte's images are varied: dogs, moths, snakes, and loons inhabit many of the poems, but there are also allusions to Philoctetes and Henri Rousseau. Ondaajte frequently achieves a powerful effect by juxtaposing disparate images and ideas as in the title of the poem "King Kong Meets Wallace Stevens." Above all, however, he celebrates life's mystery, revealing the wonder inherent in ordinary things. His remarks in "The Gate in the Head" describe his own method: "A blind lover, don't know / what I love till I write it out." The result is "the beautiful formed things caught at the wrong moment / so they are shapeless, awkward / moving to the clear." ~--Bill Gargan
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Ondaatje's witty and elegant poems resemble the whimsical dreamscapes of Rousseau, except that they are tinged with a rueful, sometimes mocking, irony. The poems have the feel of being written in a lonely moonlit kitchen at 2 a.m. in an atmosphere of deeply savored melan (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
