I had been alone for weeks
when we met there,
below Dante. The three of
us lounged in a pensione,
I was writing a book about
a dying man.
Twenty years later, you were in a bed,
on Brunswick Avenue. And
I kissed your feet,
Connie, one of my shy
farewells.
It was your year of last
things,
but you were luminous,
within those final fires.
excerpted from “Below Dante”
Every now and then I read a book of poetry, but I really don’t know anything about poetry; I just know what moves me. I read A Year of Last Things: Poems because I’ve read, and admired, several of Michael Ondaatje’s novels, but this feels like an apples and oranges situation. Several of the poems in this collection did move me (at any rate, many stanzas did), but overall, I couldn’t say what even qualifies some of these entries as poetry (several look and read like prose: without line breaks, rhythm, or rhyme), so I’m satisfied to attribute any failure to click to my own shortcomings. I do admire the effort and am happy to have now sampled more of Ondaatje’s writing. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and excerpts quoted may not be in their final forms.)
When that English novelist
returned to poetry
he learned again the
breaking line’s breath-
like leap
into the missed life
till there was no longer a
story, only stillness
or falling.
He’d altered so many
truths as prose
it was like herding cattle.
excerpted from “1912”
A Year of Last Things is autobiographical and intertextual — Ondaatje references his own work (explaining the inspirations behind characters in Anil’s Ghost and The Cat’s Table [one assumes the “book about a dying man” referred to in that first poem is The English Patient]) and he quotes from and makes reference to a wide panoply of artists and poets, from Bashō to Chuck Berry — and there’s a wistful sense of looking back and taking stock (with neither women nor pets sticking around forever). The landscape moves from Sri Lanka to Pompei to a “bus travelling from Marrakesh to Fez”, and throughout, there are countless rivers and estuaries; time flowing like water. This reads exactly as what it is: a successful novelist returning to poetry in his golden years to capture something of the breadth of his interests and experience. As for the poems, some did work for me, as in this opening to “Wanderer”:
Let us speak about our
enormous flaws as told
to us
by others — accountants,
wives before leaving —
about how we deceived
ourselves, even our dogs
by ignoring their
concerned pre-walk,
tear-stained howls,
though they rested often
on our chests
making sounds like old
ships.
And some were less successful for me, as in “The Cabbagetown Pet Clinic”, shared here in its entirety:
For years I wrote during
the day
above a veterinarian
The howls, the heavy
breathing, the sighs
from that faraway
untranslated world
Again: I have no tools with which to pry apart these poems and understand their construction, so I can only report on their surface effect; an uneven experience for me, but I’m rounding up to four stars because this feels successful (if a bit over my own head).
