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19 pages 38 minutes read

Michael Ondaatje

The Cinnamon Peeler

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1992

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Background

Authorial Context: Ceylon and Ondaatje’s Personal History

The poem alludes to the history of Ondaatje’s home country, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and provides a romanticized version of the cinnamon peeler. In the poem, the cinnamon peeler relates to desire, with cinnamon representing the speaker’s desire for the woman—his future wife. In reality, being a cinnamon peeler wasn’t so idyllic. For a time, Ceylon, under Dutch rule, had a monopoly on the cinnamon trade. The scholar Dr. Dilhani Dissanayake says that many peelers received cruel treatment, explaining, “They had their ears cut off and were confined in chains and also whipped and branded” (Romensky, Larissa, and Jo Printz. “Brutalised And Forgotten Sri Lankan Cinnamon Peelers Recognised In New Research.” ABC Central Victoria, 24 July 2020). In “The Cinnamon Peeler,” the speaker uses the subjunctive mood—“If I were a cinnamon peeler” (Line 1, emphasis added)—to imagine a hypothetical and less inhumane life as a cinnamon peeler (a job Ondaatje himself never actually held) and a world where the peeler would have the freedom to court a woman and shower her with an all-consuming desire.

The poem also arguably alludes to Ondaatje's personal history. While Ondaatje isn’t necessarily a confessional poet, his poem correlates to his marriage situation, as he wrote the poem while his marriage to Kim Jones was ending and he was about to marry Linda Spalding. Similar to how Ondaatje romanticizes the life of a cinnamon peeler, he idealizes the marriage process, whether it was his initial desire for Jones or his new desire for Spalding that inspired the poem. In reality, as Ondaatje’s life story proves, marriage, love, and desires don’t often unfold as conveniently as they seem to in the poem.

Literary Context: Erotic Poems About Food

“The Cinnamon Peeler” is one of many relatively well-known poems that use food—technically, a spice—to convey desire or sexually charged, erotic feelings. In “Food,” the 20th-century American confessional poet Anne Sexton expresses her desire for several foods and edible products. Her speaker states, “I want mother’s milk, / that good sour soup” (Lines 1-2). As Ondaatje’s cinnamon becomes one with the woman’s body, Sexton’s food products become synonymous with the body, with her speaker declaring, “I want breasts singing like eggplants” (Line 3) and “nipples like shy strawberries” (Line 5). Unlike the woman in Ondaatje’s poem, Sexton’s speaker remains unfulfilled; her lover leaves her to read his newspaper.

The transgressive Beat poet Allen Ginsberg brings his imagination to the rather erotic poem “A Supermarket in California” (1955). Ginsberg’s speaker doesn’t fantasize about a cinnamon peeler but about the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman. He imagines Whitman in the grocery, prowling around the meat section and gazing at the boys who work there. Here meat, not cinnamon, becomes a symbol of desire.

While Gertrude Stein’s long erotic poem “Lifting Belly” (1915-17) doesn’t explicitly mention food, the repetition of “belly” alludes to food and the act of eating. Ondaatje’s poem also zeroes in on the stomach. When the woman puts the speaker’s hands on her stomach, the interaction seems to symbolize their marriage. Ondaatje’s poem arguably relates to his intense feelings over his marriages, and Stein’s poem arguably relates to her powerful feelings for her life partner, Alice B. Toklas.

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