ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a sense of some of the concerns in the criticism of Ondaatje's poetry that might help to provide a context for interpretation, which is purposely focused and not comprehensive. Ondaatje's poetry makes its own world but is of a world contending with poetry in which the role of the poet cannot be assumed as in more settled cultures or ones not left to contend with the aftermath of empire and colony. Other critics contribute to our understanding of the interpretation of Ondaatje. For Barbour, Ondaatje makes myth from life, which means that poetry is a story of experience and, therefore, the world. Other critics discuss Ondaatje's poetry more generally. The mythical urge in the early poems of Michael Ondaatje, written from the age of twenty to thirty-five, finds expression through reflective and natural imagery in the poems. The nature of reflection and the reflection of nature also express the relation between word and world, image and reality.
