Thursday 8 May 2008

Memo to myself

A quick signing in early this morning, off to Whitireia today, and I still have to complete the Ondaatje review. Am seeing the bigger picture in his writing, the emphasis on scarring, suddenly realised that was what The English Patient was about too, of course, a person unrecognisable under his scars, they call him the English patient though he is Hungarian. Ondaatje's own wounds caused by his father's madness?

Am absorbed by Saramago's latest, Death at Intervals, (Harvill Secker, 2008,translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa) which is like one long prose poem, no intervals to that, funny and as always kind, about humanity's foibles and preoccupation with self.

His best to date, I think. I shall finish it today and that should free up my head, ready for more poetry.

In case I forget: let me review David Whyte next. (Just read a piece of his in a magazine.)

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