SOURCE: “Point Blank: Narrative in Michael Ondaatje's the man with seven toes” in Canadian Poetry, No. 6, Spring/Summer, 1980, pp. 14-24.

In the following essay, Solecki offers an explanatory overview of Ondaatje's the man with seven toes, arguing that the collection is “a pivotal book in Ondaatje's development.”

In view of the acclaim and the attention received by Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970) and Coming Through Slaughter (1976) it is inevitable that his first book-length work, the man with seven toes (1969), is often overlooked in most discussions either of his work or of contemporary Canadian writing. This is unfortunate because this long sequence of poems is a complex work, interesting in its own right, and a pivotal book in Ondaatje's development. It is with the man with seven toes that we first see him moving toward the longer and more experimental form that will become characteristic...