What the Twilight Says

by Derek Walcott

Overview

This essay collection includes the renowned poet's Nobel lecture, literary criticism, reflections on Caribbean life, and more.
Nobel laureate Derek Walcott was a leading voice in 20th century Caribbean literature. What the Twilight Says, Walcott's first collection of essays, draws together pieces originally published in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and elsewhere. It includes his moving and insightful examinations of the paradoxes of Caribbean culture, his Nobel lecture, and his reckoning of the work and significance of such poets as Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost, Les Murray, and Ted Hughes, and of prose writers such as V. S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau.
On every subject he takes up, Walcott the essayist brings to bear the lyric power and syncretic intelligence that made him one of the major poetic voices of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466880504
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/04/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	255
File size:	482 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.

Table of Contents

I

What the Twilight Says
The Muse of History
The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory

II

On Robert Lowell
On Hemingway
C. L. R. James
The Garden Path: V. S. Naipaul
Magic Industry: Joseph Brodsky
The Master of the Ordinary: Philip Larkin
Ted Hughes
Crocodile Dandy: Les Murray
The Road Taken: Robert Frost
A Letter to Chamoiseau

III

Café Martinique: A Story

Editorial Reviews

...[A] densely poetic exploration of one heralded Caribbean writer's musings about other writers — heralded, Caribbean or otherwise.

Walcott is a kingfisher critic, with flashing insights, an original who writes a profound, poetic prose . . . Derek Walcott's words go from strength to strength.
#151;The London Times

Paula Burnett

There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can.
—The New Republic

Sven Birkets

A poet's (poetical) prose about poetry.

Kirkus Reviews

There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can.” —Sven Birkerts, The New Republic

“Walcott is a kingfisher critic, with flashing insights, an original who writes a profound, poetic prose . . . Derek Walcott's words go from strength to strength.” —Paula Burnett, The Times (London)

From the Publisher