The appearance of poems in Running in the Family make the genre of this book even more complex. I supposed Running in the Family to be a memory work that is made up by short stories when I read it for the first time, but the previous structure is broken by the poems that added among those stories by Ondaatje. We talked about The Cinnamon Peeler in class. I used to consider it as a simple love poetry, but after the discussion, I figure out the deeper meaning behind the poem The Cinnamon Peeler which can be connected with identity and belonging. However, I started to wonder about what’s the meaning for other few poetries that put by Ondaatje in Running in the Family.
I think the idea of identity and belonging can also be applied to other poems in the book. What interests me is the time Ondaatje mentions color. In the one we discussed in class, The Cinnamon Peeler, Ondaatje talks about “I would ride your bed and leave the yellow bark dust on your pillow”, and in High Flowers, he mentions “she chops the yellow coconut/the color of Anuradhapura stone”, and what’s more, in Women Like You, this color is described as “the golden skins have caught my mind”. Back to our group discussion in class, what we thought was that “yellow” worked as a mark of being an Asian. It also represented the influence of Asia that left on Ondaatje. This can also be seen in the other two poems I mentioned before. Ondaatje repetitively uses “yellow” to represent Asia that yellow is the skin color of Asians. At the same time, he also gives the identity of being Asian through “yellow”. And I also hold the point that this is the emphasis Ondaatje made to tell the audience that the poetries are all about Ceylon and Asia.
Among all those poetries about women and love mentioned in the previous paragraph, To Colombo seems to be a little different from them. Other than talking about love, Ondaatje tends to describe landscape of Colombo in this poetry. While reading To Colombo, readers may feel like Ondaatje is showing you the charismatic view of Colombo. He shows us the Sigiriya hills, cool Kurumba and the women, the coconuts and the knife behind the sunlight. I want to make a connection between To Colombo and Women Like You. The Colombo portrayed by Ondaatje is just like the woman in Women Like You who makes the author feel “seeing you I want no other life”. This woman makes people stop for her, just like what is said in To Colombo, “stop for the cool Kurumba”. Colombo can be considered as an attractive place for Ondaatje that he stops for it if he has a chance to be back there. And it is the place that will always be in the memory of Ondaatje just like the woman.
