Forgiveness, reminiscence, loss and the vicissitudes of love are among the many recurring themes of A Year of Last Things, Michael Ondaatje’s distinctive new assortment of poetry. More than a decade has handed since Ondaatje, who shared the 1992 Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, revealed a ebook of poems. The return is welcome, as he demonstrates but once more that he’s a grasp of the style.
Most of the poems that seem listed here are in free verse, with just a few others written wholly or partly as prose poems. Each piece shows not solely Ondaatje’s present for the lyrical phrase but additionally his peripatetic nature, as the gathering travels throughout varied international locations, most notably Italy, England and his native Sri Lanka. The ebook is split into a number of sections, with the primary centering on forgiveness and reminiscence. It’s troublesome to single out highlights when each poem is so completed, however significantly transferring is “5 A.M.,” a young piece on the restorative magnificence of recollections and the way in which they return unexpectedly, “like a gift / from forgetfulness, / as a desire can wake you.”
Later sections embody ruminations on unfulfilled lives, equivalent to “The Then,” during which Ondaatje writes of being struck by the urge “to erase this life, and desire what I might have known / in photographs of you before we met.” There can also be a bunch of erudite love poems, together with the witty “Leg Glance,” during which he employs a cricket metaphor referring to “not bothering to move / from the path of the dangerous ball,” to parallel one’s habits within the midst of a love affair.
Set in museums and piazzas throughout a number of continents, with references to painters, novelists, playwrights, jazz musicians and even W.G. Sebald’s approach of incorporating images into the textual content, A Year of Last Things brilliantly explores its themes.
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