Derek Walcott Books

...i firmly believe he has reperesented the caribbean in a way no- one has ever done before. Derek Walcott's diction and his superb metaphors are yet to be seen in any other caribbean poet. Yet, like the jamaican reggae superstar Bob Marley, Walcott has used his art in such a way that the whole world can identify with his work. His development of major themes such as alienation and cultural identity, Caribbean history , society and development and the pOst colonial era truly represents the region in a realistic way. His poems are truly inspirational and representative of the Caribbean. Walcott's poems are a reseviour for any historian who wishes to know about the history of the Caribbean. One shoud note that Walcott has not only used the english language in his poems but he has created the rhyme and rhythm in such a way to achieve a Caribbean creole(See "Parades Parades"), thus firmly establishing his identity as a caribbean poet and writer.IN CONCLUSION, Walcott is a true genius and we in the caribbean are proud of him.

One cannot recommend this book too highly. It is a certain classic for scores of generations to come. Derek Walcott IS the Carribean. His poems enrich the reader's sense of the Carribean without ever over-sentimentalizing. Walcott's keen observations heighten the familiar, while at times domesticating the exotic. His poem "The Spoiler's Return" is equally humorous and disturbing, as it adresses the social problems of the Carribean, and is best appreciated when read with a Carribean accent. His lines ebb and flow like a tide, but always draw you in and never disappoint. Must read poems of his: "Codicil", "The Spoiler's Return", "LI" (from the Midsummer collection), "The Schooner Flight", "The Fortunate Traveller". If you buy one collection of English poetry published after WWII, this should be the book you purchase. No one alive can make the English language work as powerfully and brilliantly for him/her as Derek Walcott can.

This cool dude uses language in a way no one else does. He redefines syntax, conventions, the way words are placed together, and forms a new interpretation of phrase-synthesis I can't even begin to describe. Actually, I will. There's lots of surrealism here, but not just for its own sake. There's deep philosophy here too. The sombering tones give the incredulous imagery and abstractionistic logic (this guy's a hard read, as it says in the preface) and language that makes him something like a Sylvia Plath in tuxedo, but with a much wider-spanning genius that gives his poetry a greater variety of elements and vocabulary, and with better breaks and sense of poetic rhythm.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Walcott is the greatest living poet writing in English, on account of the richness and originality of his language, the accuracy of his natural and social observations, and the diversity and ambition of his subject matter. Walcott works with traditional meter in rhyme in both a strict sense and a looser and more ground-breaking sense, and he also has a formidable command of free verse techniques.

Derek Walcott's "Collected Poems 1948-1984", is a work of literary genius. It is a classic that echoes the works of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and other great poets of the past. Walcott not only echoes their styles, he has embraced them and made them his own; adding his own strong island flavour. So what you get is a very refreshing read full of images and sounds that bombard the senses; carrying you away to another world. This book is a road into the poet's heart which echoes the loves, passions and sorrows of all humanity

Walcott's poetry sweeps you along on a series of vivid and memorable images that leave you breathless.

Walcott's photograph on the back of the 1st edition sums up the feeling of Bounty- Sorrow, the grief of the death of friends and loved ones, faith in God seen "as through a glass darkly", the exhaustion of a sensitive man aware of his own mortality. Yet, through it all is the great sense of gratitude for the folk culture of the country that has nurtured him. And if he will not make great declarations of religious faith, he is thankful for the sun on the leaves, the ocean outside his door, the songs of Sessenne the folk singer of St. Lucia. Like Crusoe and Odysseus, this fortunate traveller has returned to his bench on the edge of the sea under the breadfruit leaves, "where stars and fireflies breed." This poet is past posturing. "The only art left is the preparation of grace", and even now, ever the bright eyed poet (behind the tears of the aging sage), he is "going down to the shallow edge to begin again." Walcott's only vocation has been poetry, his universe that of letters. In this he has never lost his faith.

READING THIS IS LIKE PAINTING A PORTRAIT . IT GLIMMER LIKE THE JEWEL OF THE CARRIBEANBLUE TONE IS A DEEP PATHOSOF PERSONAL EMOTION THAT COME ONLY COME FROM THE PEN OF ONE WHO LOVES HIS HOMELAMD AND WRITE ABOUT IT

For reference, the white hound may be the one found in "Finding the Moses" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. See also youtube's "Tiepolo's Hound: A Reading by Derek Walcott".

With so many wondrous works, it is tempting to take Walcott's poetic virtuosity for granted. Of them all, this is my favorite, and this one features his virtuosity at its most shining. His effortlessly rhyming couplets sing themes of painting and poetry, biography and myth, existential pain and release,geography and spirit. And Pissarro the painter is duly celebrated.

Derek Walcott has always confessed his ambitions to be a painter of note.While poetry became his favourite wife, his love for painting never disappeared. Over the years he has continued to paint, and his art now decorates the covers of his poetry collections. "Tiepolo's Hound" seems one of the least personal of Walcott's books. While we get glimpses of the poet's life, he is more concerned to explore the life of Camille Pisarro to understand the heart of the individual bound to the calling of artist. It seems a tentative, searching exploration.Obviously identifying with their common Caribbean childhood and the influences of landscape and history they share, Walcott tries to see into the complex struggles of this artist who left the Caribbean for Paris, to become one of the fathers of impressionism.Seeking his epiphanic hound,he shares with us the painters who excited his artistic inspiration. Alongside his rhyming couplets he has placed twenty six of his own paintings-some very good, others less so.It is rare to find a book like this, coffetable poetry and art together by the same artist. Now seventy, this Nobel Laureate is not afraid to share his meditations on art and poetry-through art and poetry-warts and all.A collector's item.Walcott's readers must be patient with him, and try to go with him as he charts, quite bravely,his questionings of the artist's commitment and the cost."Whatever the age is, it lies in the small spring of poetry everywhere"(p66).A defining comment.Read "poetry" as the very heart of all art.

In this exhaustive and thorough 714page biography, Bruce King sets out the development of Derek Walcott as a poet and dramatist whose ambition and talent led him from the colonial backwaters of the Caribbean of the forties to the Nobel stage in Stockholm in 1992. The reader will not find a gossipy, tell-all chronicle.King follows Walcott from his earliest years as a child prodigy in Saint Lucia through university in Jamaica,life in Trinidad where he formed his Trinidad Theatre Workshop and on to his jet setting years as an international writer whose personal friends were Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, Paul Simon et al.Through his close detailing of Walcott's relative poverty, his incessant travelling to read his work, his disappointments, his successes,his sheer prolific output of writing and art, King fulfills his goal to demonstrate the effects on a major literary talent of cultural decolonialisation, the recognition of national literatures, the place of the U.S.in encouraging artists like Walcott.Walcott's is a very modern life,an example of the changing face of the once imperial-international literary and artistic scene.Walcott's work, as seen in his most recentTieopolo's Hound (an integration of poetry and art), continues to defy literature boundaries.King's biography will further understanding of the writer, his work, the culture from which he comes, and the larger movements in 20th century arts and letters.A must for general libraries, literary collections, and for readers and students of modern literature. A recommended companion volume is also King's earlier "Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama"(Oxford,1995).

In this exhaustive and thorough 714page biography, Bruce King sets out the development of Derek Walcott as a poet and dramatist whose ambition and talent led him from the colonial backwaters of the Caribbean of the forties to the Nobel stage in Stockholm in 1992. The reader will not find a gossipy, tell-all chronicle.King follows Walcott from his earliest years as a child prodigy in Saint Lucia through university in Jamaica,life in Trinidad where he formed his Trinidad Theatre Workshop and on to his jet setting years as an international writer whose personal friends were Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Les Murray, Susan Sontag, Robert Lowell, Paul Simon et al.Through his close detailing of Walcott's relative poverty, his incessant travelling to read his work, his disappointments, his successes,his sheer prolific output of writing and art, King fulfills his goal to demonstrate the effects on a major literary talent of cultural decolonialisation, the recognition of national literatures, the place of the U.S.in encouraging artists like Walcott.Walcott's is a very modern life,an example of the changing face of the once imperial-international literary and artistic scene.Walcott's work, as seen in his most recentTieopolo's Hound (an integration of poetry and art), continues to defy literature boundaries.King's biography will further understanding of the writer, his work, the culture from which he comes, and the larger movements in 20th century arts and letters.A must for general libraries, literary collections, and for readers and students of modern literature. A recommended companion volume is also King's earlier "Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama"(Oxford,1995).

I gave this volume to a friend who had no experience of reading poetry (since school, that is), and had asked me what sort of poems he could start with. I pointed out a couple of poems that I thought were highlights, and wished him good luck. When I met up with him a week later, he burst into excited praise for the book. He'd started on the poems I had suggested, and rapidly proceeded to read the whole collection, several times over.
I quite agree with his response - in my early 20s this was one of the books that got me excited in contemporary poets and poetry. While Walcott is not foremost an experimentalist - and he might at odd moments almost be thought a sentimentalist - his sheer joy of craft and wordsmithing is a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold. This book is one of those things that can remind you why life is worth living. It's that good.

Although Derek Walcott's Caribbean meditation on Homer's Odyssey stands by itself as an eloquent and thrilling work of epic poetry, to read it without a helping hand--or book--is to miss many of its riches. In accessible language (no unintelligible academic posturing here), Hamner reveals the allusions and untangles the threads: Homer, history of St. Lucia, Walcott's autobiographical allusions, etc. It can be used while one is reading the poem, or skimmed afterward. (It took me a day.) Either way, it's excellent and readable support.

This is a very thoughtful and very original book that provides excellent readings of some familiar figures, such as Yeats and Walcott, and fine introductory reflections on writers less well-known in America. The approach is generous but tough-minded, the prose is strong; this is exemplary work in the area of post-colonial studies.

In the "Prodigal", the noble poet luareate, Walcott proves again
he is a man of humble proportion with grand perspective. This landscape of memory lives in poignant hues. His flock of commas soar across stanzas of history. In the color nuiance, he bares his painted soul, so we may grow.

I love Derek Walcott, and this is the best collection of his poetry I've ever seen. Amazing editing.

Walcott confidently feels his way into epic form, borrowing the blind eyes of Homer and tropes from Homer's tales. Jam-packed with craft, OMEROS' Dantesque tercets make hairpin turns on the pinpoints of vowels and consonants. Walcott is nothing if not evocative, calling forth the spirits of breadfruit, waves, Plains Indians, sunken treasure, sea creatures and all his other muses with a music that is beyond sounds.

For all the great poetry, what fans of the modern epic will miss in OMEROS is a narrative through-line. Structurally, it is more like William Carlos Williams' PATERSON or especially Hart Crane's THE BRIDGE, than like THE ILLIAD or THE ODYSSEY. The stories in the poem are given secondary importance to the ideas. While I will not disagree with other reviewers' characterizations of the characters as 'well-developed,' I will say that Walcott gives his characters very little to do. The greatest journey is the one taken by the un-named narrator (who seems to be prowling the University Poet circuit from the Carribean to the U.S. to England). Those who want a story with their modern epic are directed to THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER by James Merrill.

What Walcott offers in place of narrative is recollections, meditations and essays on a post-colonial world. Certain human motifs are bound to repeat, he says, and demonstrates with the story of fishermen Hector and Achille fighting for the island girl in the yellow dress, Helen. To me, Omeros is really a collection of poems in a similar form spiralling around similar themes, taking up each others' melodies in different keys. Like any symphony, it sometimes gets lost. But its individual passages are, more often than not, magnificent -- and beautiful to hear.

Exploring the relationships between natives, tourists, and nature, Walcott moves beyond just our relationships with one another to create this modern epic. Evocative of the Iliad with its battles between Hector and Achille over the yellow-dressed Helen, Omeros moves beyond just the interactions of the natives to greater themes.

There are many exciting parts to the poem: the beauty of the language, the themes, that it was only on the second time reading Omeros that I realized it rhymed, such is the seeming effortlessness with which Walcott writes. It is a modern epic for the way it is able to really explore human relationships with one another, with the trees, with people invading our indigenous societies.

Walcott manages to focus on a few people in spite of the seemingly huge scope of Omeros, and this makes the book much more deeply enjoyable. I recommend it heartily.

Why is it not possible to bestow 0 stars upon an item? I cannot express deeply enough how horrible this 320-some-odd-page poem is. It is the longest complaint I have ever had to trudge through. That is all it is. One long list of complaints. All the narrator does throughout the piece is whine about the same things. A repetative compliation of meaningless and monotonous rants about where he belongs in life, and what makes them so tedious is the fact that you can never relate to the man, so there is no way to feel remorse. I will admit that there are some eloquent descriptions and very mild humour, but it is not enough to save this tragically wordy, muddled, vague, boring, unoriginal, god-please-take-me-now tribute to an overrated classics writer. Save yourself the long nights and headaches....Stay far, far away!

Omeros ! A treat for the lover of language. Much has been and will be written of this literary challenge : plot, characters, and segueing epic; but little will ever do justice to the heart of the matter,- ( which demands this conscious encomium.)

What for Habermas is the ideal of communicative action is celebrated in Walcott as the action of poetic communication. Walcott paints.

On every page, he offers the reader a life time of disciplined observation - the fruit of which he dispenses with prodigal largesse.

This humble, almost unconscious master of metaphor is able to enter unerringly into the consciousness of things and to emerge from that dive with pearls, whose inner flower-flames he unfurls or explodes in liquid light for the benefit of all.

One wishes that Omeros had remained faithful to its native soil - the simple wisdom of Aristotelian unity. The manifold may well be too vast and seems to dilute the poetic distillation. ( Though the genre itself and Walcott's coupled ethnicity exculpate, one still wishes ...etc.)

The work is all done in and as an act of love; still, a brochetting irk pensiles in the mind :
How can a love so in love with its art and the art of its art be anything but artful.

Anticipating the critics who - like he says elsewhere - would spaniel after him like an old stag to hang their theses on the exclamations of his antlers, Walcott may well have an answer to this and other squibs. His arrowing sea-swift Omeros veers and scales with extra territorial sui generis facticity.

The rich pyrotechnics of his fractaling passion, is, like a flung star, a challenge to young energetic poets like Colin Carberry of Ireland , Kendel Hippolyte and Mc.Donald Dixon from the Islands.

Omeros should hold a prominent place on every bookshelf.

My review title shouldn't be construed as me claiming any knowledge re: Caribbean culture/history, or indeed -any- of the experiences of the disenfranchised peoples this book touches on. All I can say is that the glowing reviews here on Amazon are accurate. Walcott's poetry is supple almost beyond belief: so facile and brilliant that it would stand between the reader and the subject if Walcott himself didn't admit that, yes, he can be awfully facile and brilliant with the English language! The writer walks a dozen dangerous lines - among them, the could-be-precious placing of himself in his own poem - and walks away triumphant from every single challenge.

If you are looking for a linear "story" in the tradition of Homer but transplanted to a Caribbean locale, this isn't it. If however you are looking for great poetry and the understanding of others (and yourself) that great poetry can bring, then it is right here. OMEROS is eminently worth your time.