The Distance of a Shout Selected Poems

"Michael Ondaatje navigates his own past, beginning with memories of distant landscapes, remembrances of his childhood in Sri Lanka and his eccentric family, to his life in rural southern Ontario with its beloved rivers, celebrations of admired fellow travelers and treasured friends, the close ties of children. Ondaatje is one of the great poets of love, and here we follow him through the exhilarations of youth, into that 'storm of music' and the passionate swerves of longing and desire, until we reach the calm of that moment when 'only a cloud's reflection holding you up / You swim into late afternoon.'"--