A poet's (poetical) prose about poetry. Walcott's (The Bounty,
etc.) humid rhetoric can overwhelm a subject, as when "I try to
divert my concentration from that mesmeric gritted oyster of sputum
on the concrete floor." And so, a reader wandering through the
periodically flowery byways and orotund arabesques of these 14
essays may long, instead, at times, for a more plainspoken,
adamantine critical voice - like that, say, of poet-critic Mary
Karr. Yet entwined here with the tricky verbal vines and orchids
are also insights of an unusual provenance. West Indian-born
Walcott's views of current poetry and postcolonial culture are
admirably independent and syncretic. He is able to take the measure
of such stylistically distinct avatars as the relentlessly,
redemptively flinty British poet Philip Larkin and American
confessionalist Robert Lowell. Walcott spikes his intermittently
languid reveries with comments that crackle: "Modern American
poetics is as full of its sidewalk hawkers as a modern American
city: this is the only meter, this is the American way to breathe,
this is the variable foot," he complains. That error isn't his.
Rather, the 1992 Nobel laureate explores, in the emphatic plural,
poetry's various islands, while diverging now and then to authors
of prose. He claims Hemingway as"a West Indian writer" and salutes
the Trinidadian C.L.R. James for Beyond a Boundary, termed by
Walcott "a cricketer's Iliad." Still, our critic's lens isn't
flawless. As an apologist for Ted Hughes, Walcott proves laughably
sentimental: "Poets come to look like their poetry . . . Hughes's
face emerges through the pane of paper in its weathered openness as
both friendly and honest. It speaks trust." Rather conspicuously in
an era of major contemporary women poets, the book omits positive
mention of women (save for Dickinson) as anything more than
muselike pretty faces; they are simply not part of Walcott's poetic
roll call. But so goes literary independence. An archaic male
vanity makes some mistakes on the poetic prowl. (Kirkus Reviews)
This is the first collection of essays and critical writings by the
winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1992 and the Caribbean's
greatest poet. Derek Walcott has long held a unique position in the
world of Caribbean letters and - beyond that - in the literary
consciousness of Great Britain, the United States and the rest of
the world. He is one of the most accomplished poets of his
generation and a profound thinker on the artistic and political
questions which impinge on his mind - and ours. Among the subjects
which come under his consideration in this collection are the
examples of his poetic mentors and confreres, Robert Lowell, Joseph
Brodsky and Seamus Heaney, and the political issues raised by the
writings of his fellow-Caribbeans V.S. Naipaul and Patrick
Chamoiseau. The intellectual passion and metaphorical vigour which
heighten Derek Walcott's poetry are plainly apparent in his prose
as well.
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