The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

Discover the inimitable, essential poetry of Derek Walcott, spanning his celebrated six-decade career

"He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language." Alongside Joseph Brodsky's words of praise, one might mention the concrete honors that renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 draws from every stage of the poet's storied career, from his teenage years to his late masterpieces. Experience the evolution of his work, starting with early pieces like "In My Eighteenth Year," to his first widely celebrated verse, "A Far Cry from Africa," which speaks of violence and loyalties divided in one's very blood. Immerse yourself in the rich imagery of his mature work, like "The Schooner Flight" from The Star-Apple Kingdom, and savor the tender reflections of his later poems, like "Sixty Years After" from the 2010 collection White Egrets.

Across 65 years, Walcott grapples with timeless themes: the riddle of identity, the legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia, the mysteries of faith, love, and nature, and the challenges of aging and loss. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend, the English poet Glyn Maxwell, is a testament to the enduring power of Walcott's poetry, which continues to resonate with readers across generations.

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The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

Discover the inimitable, essential poetry of Derek Walcott, spanning his celebrated six-decade career

"He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language." Alongside Joseph Brodsky's words of praise, one might mention the concrete honors that renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 draws from every stage of the poet's storied career, from his teenage years to his late masterpieces. Experience the evolution of his work, starting with early pieces like "In My Eighteenth Year," to his first widely celebrated verse, "A Far Cry from Africa," which speaks of violence and loyalties divided in one's very blood. Immerse yourself in the rich imagery of his mature work, like "The Schooner Flight" from The Star-Apple Kingdom, and savor the tender reflections of his later poems, like "Sixty Years After" from the 2010 collection White Egrets.

Across 65 years, Walcott grapples with timeless themes: the riddle of identity, the legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia, the mysteries of faith, love, and nature, and the challenges of aging and loss. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend, the English poet Glyn Maxwell, is a testament to the enduring power of Walcott's poetry, which continues to resonate with readers across generations.

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The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013

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Overview

Discover the inimitable, essential poetry of Derek Walcott, spanning his celebrated six-decade career

"He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language." Alongside Joseph Brodsky's words of praise, one might mention the concrete honors that renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 draws from every stage of the poet's storied career, from his teenage years to his late masterpieces. Experience the evolution of his work, starting with early pieces like "In My Eighteenth Year," to his first widely celebrated verse, "A Far Cry from Africa," which speaks of violence and loyalties divided in one's very blood. Immerse yourself in the rich imagery of his mature work, like "The Schooner Flight" from The Star-Apple Kingdom, and savor the tender reflections of his later poems, like "Sixty Years After" from the 2010 collection White Egrets.

Across 65 years, Walcott grapples with timeless themes: the riddle of identity, the legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia, the mysteries of faith, love, and nature, and the challenges of aging and loss. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend, the English poet Glyn Maxwell, is a testament to the enduring power of Walcott's poetry, which continues to resonate with readers across generations.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466874459
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: 06/24/2014
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 640
File size: 726 KB

About the Author

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo's Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Glyn Maxwell was born in Welwyn Garden City, England. He is the author of several collections of poems, has staged several plays in London and New York, and was the poetry editor of The New Republic from 2001 to 2007. He lives in London.


Glyn Maxwell has long been regarded as one of Britain’s major poets. He has been awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Prize, and the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as being shortlisted three times for both the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. Three of his books were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. His One Thousand Nights and Counting: Selected Poems was published last year. Many of his plays have been staged in London and New York. They include The Lifeblood, which was British Theatre Guide’s ‘Best Play on the Fringe’ at Edinburgh in 2004, Broken Journey and The Only Girl in the World (both Time Out Critics’ Choices). Oberon Books publishes his Plays One (The Lifeblood, The Only Girl in the World and Wolfpit), Plays Two (Broken Journey, Best Man Speech and The Last Valentine), The Forever Waltz, Liberty, After Troy, Merlin and the Woods of Time and the libretti The Lion’s Face and Seven Angels.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FROM

25 Poems

(1949)

THE FISHERMEN ROWING HOMEWARD ...

The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk,
Yet others, who now watch my progress outward To a sea which is crueler than any word Of love, may see in me the calm my voyage makes,
IN MY EIGHTEENTH YEAR

for Warwick Walcott

Having measured the years today by the calendar That tells your seventeenth death, I stayed until It was the honest time to remember How the house has lived with and without you well.
Nor can I hurl taunts or tantrums.
PRIVATE JOURNAL

We started from places that saw no gay carracks wrecked And where our green solitudes did not look deciduous;
To teach us writing. Outside boyhoods chased their leather Football along the level glare of playing fields, and Sweated and cursed amiably, while we sat, with slow tears Shaping the heart's weather.

It is too early or too late, to ask if we were gifted With this pain that saw all, yet was no man's remedy,
We learned to hate from too much rumor, friends and masters,
Of time, who could not see like us their deep affliction;
And love came, cracked the hearts it joined just as love ought,
LETTER TO A PAINTER IN ENGLAND

Where you rot under the strict gray industry Of cities of fog and winter fevers, I Send this to remind you of personal islands For which Gauguins sicken, and to explain How I have grown to know your passionate Talent and this wild love of landscape.

It is April and already no doubt for you As the journals report, the prologues of spring Appear behind the rails of city parks,
And you must find it difficult to imagine This April as a season where the tide burns Black; leaves crack into ashes from the drought;
Made me think of your chief scenes for painting And days of instruction at the soft villa When we watched your serious experience, learning.
But the grace we avoid, that gave us vision,
A CITY'S DEATH BY FIRE

After that hot gospeler had leveled all but the churched sky,
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
In town leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath

Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
AS JOHN TO PATMOS

As John to Patmos, among the rocks and the blue live air, hounded His heart to peace, as here surrounded By the strewn silver on waves, the wood's crude hair, the rounded Breasts of the milky bays, palms, flocks, and the green and dead Leaves, the sun's brass coin on my cheek, where Canoes brace the sun's strength, as John in that bleak air,
This island is heaven away from the dustblown blood of cities,
As John to Patmos, among each love-leaping air,
I WITH LEGS CROSSED ALONG THE DAYLIGHT WATCH

I with legs crossed along the daylight watch The variegated fists of clouds that gather over The uncouth features of this my prone island.

Meanwhile the steamers that disturb our lost horizons prove Us lost.
Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient.
And my life, too early of course for the profound cigarette,
I go of course through all the isolated acts,
Until from all I turn to think how In the middle of the journey through my life O how I came upon you, my Reluctant leopard of the slow eyes.

CHAPTER 2

FROM

Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos

(1949)

CANTO II

Voyaging,
Talk less of solitudes, corners of lonely talent,
The ghosts vanish, stars fall like eyes,
Islands curved like the fling of a stone to sea,
Instinctive always with migratory companions,
Not with excesses, but thoughtless and satisfied,
In that villa, overlooking the town We did not learn much, but we were secure On Saturdays, in the smell of oil and paint.
And then at evening again the broad light dying From the exiling sea.
CHAPTER 3

FROM

Poems

(1957)

THE DORMITORY

Time is the guide that brings all to a crux,
These sleep like islands, and I watch sleep lick Their arms' flung promontories, remove With individual erasure all their love Of muscle. Now towards the sea there, I look

Where rippling signatures of water break Over the sighing dormitories of The drowned whom soft winds move,
Or from these boys, who in the uncertain luck Of sleep, expect to live,
TO NIGEL

O child as guiltless as the grass,
HART CRANE

He walked a bridge where Gulls' wings brush wires and sound A harp of steel in air,
Liberty offered God a match.
Bye, bye to Brooklyn,
The sea was only ritual, he had Already seen complexity go mad In the asylum, metaphor. He stood From Brooklyn, on the brink Of being, a straw doll blown From Manhattan to Mexico to sink Into that sea where vast deliriums drown.

THE SISTERS OF SAINT JOSEPH

Behind the stained water of the lucent panes, they Bend their white monotony of prayers,

Their lips turn pages of their meditation,
A life devoted to whispers. Are they Secure from doubt, do work and prayers

Postpone the heretic, Thought, the anemic meditation,
Does that one in gardens, cultivating rows of prayers To the Little Flower, remember Wales or Mayo? They

Are expressionless as gowns, their laughter Faith makes hysteria, deepening meditation.

Early to rise and hard to die, does the bell's cracked faith Weary or win, do the young nun's prayers

Offend the wrinkled sister who clucks at meditation As interrupting cooking? O how assured are they?

Admirable sacrifice, since they are human, that they Young in direction, bend sapling strong to faith,

Faith. A worn carpet under an old nun's feet, and prayers A novice's candle nervous with meditation.

KINGSTON — NOCTURNE

The peanut barrows whistle, and the ladies with perfumes And prophylactics included in the expenses Hiss in a minor key, the desperate think of rooms
Walking near parks, where the trees, wearing white socks Shake over the illicit liaison under the leaves,
Have still to be tested, and stores shut up their eyes At the beggars and hoodlums, when the skin breaks From the city and the owls, and maggots and lice,
THE WRATH OF GOD flames like a neon sign on railings, they Scatter their cargo of sleepless fleas,
By lanternlight the pocomania of the Second Coming when De Lawd say Him going tyake us by the hand, or in antiphony A calypso wafts from the pubs, and Ulysses again
The theaters are wounded with midnight, and the lymph Of the innocent and guilty pour from their sides,
And always to the alone, the stone villas with the prosaic Essay on façades, wink out their yellow welcomes, one by one,
Point some to a wife warm bed, or the arms of lice Kneeling to the shout in the street, and sleep's equation Lays the black down with the white, and death at half the price
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "The Poetry Of Derek Walcott 1948–2013"
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Copyright © 2014 Derek Walcott.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
FROM 25 POEMS (1949),
FROM EPITAPH FOR THE YOUNG: XII CANTOS (1949),
FROM POEMS (1957),
FROM IN A GREEN NIGHT (1948–60),
FROM THE CASTAWAY (1965),
FROM THE GULF (1969),
FROM ANOTHER LIFE (1973),
FROM SEA GRAPES (1976),
FROM THE STAR-APPLE KINGDOM (1979),
FROM THE FORTUNATE TRAVELLER (1982),
FROM MIDSUMMER (1984),
FROM THE ARKANSAS TESTAMENT (1987),
FROM THE BOUNTY (1997),
FROM TIEPOLO'S HOUND (2000),
FROM THE PRODIGAL (2004),
FROM WHITE EGRETS (2010),
Index of Titles and First Lines,
Also by Derek Walcott,
Copyright,

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