Handwriting

"Tumultuous, vibrant, tragic and over too soon." --*Newsday*

**Handwriting** 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.

*From the Trade Paperback edition.*