In his poetry and fiction, Michael Ondaatje has shown a concern for both the power and the emotive limitations of words. He has grown increasingly interested both in making his words more public and accessible, and in the dynamic elements of other artforms that make such communalization possible. To some extent, his poetry constitutes a kind of exorcism, an exercise aimed at confirming and refining a unique approach to writing. With Coming Through Slaughter, Ondaatje shows that his personal aesthetic is fully matured, for it represents a complicated and successful fusion of kinetic artforms and the physical rhythms on which they depend. Through this integration, Ondaatje has transfigured words into Word and has made his writing more tangible, more true, and more immediately accessible to his readers.
