Derek WalcottReseñas

It would be welcome if OMEROS was accompanied by a tour guide.

"...when the sunrise brightens the river's memory."

Parallels with Homer's Iliad can be hard to find in St. Lucia and Africa.

So good that Ma of the No Pain Cafe finally searches out The Cure that we all might like to find!

Helen and Achille, Helen and Hector, Helen and Major Plunket...? And Hector's baby...?

We understand the characters and travels of Achille, Seven Seas, and Philoctete, yet so little about Helen or Hector.

The author as a main character delivered an unusual turn to the plot of rescues and hallucination.

I felt a connection with St. Lucia, yet little with Achille, Hector, or Helen.

And why did Maud bend to Helen's whims?

OMEROS = mysterious, mystical, inscrutable, cyclical, "con-fu-sion," and yes, inspiring.

I really like The Harbour

Ugh, I don't get it and the "verse" is just terrible.

Queen and Country was created by Steve McQueen in response to his 2003 commission by the Imperial War Museum's Art Commissions Committee to create a work in response to the war in Iraq. Inspired by the dedication and selflessness of the servicemen and women he met in Basra in 2003, McQueen devised the concept that each of the soldiers killed in the conflict be commemorated on official postage stamps. Using images selected by the families of the deceased, full sheets of stamps, one per soldier with their name and date of death, are displayed in vertical sliding drawers contained in an oak cabinet. Neither for nor against the war, Queen and Country, McQueen's dignified and moving response to his commission as war artist, is a work of personal tribute and commemoration. This commemorative book featuring 160 service men and women has been published on the occasion of the display of the work at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 March - 18 July 2010.

The writing in these is lovely, but another reviewer described this volume as "whiny," and it certainly read like that at times. Old age, the dissipation of talent (or worry over such), and the loss of friends and muses are doubtless enough to make one whiny, but I didn't particularly enjoy reading poem after poem about it.

Blurb:
Derek Walcott's Omeros is a poem in five books, of circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer, which simultaneously charts two currents of history: the visible history charted in events -- the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement -- and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.
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I picked this up back in the 1990s thinking I might be interested in the content, and to study the form. The story is set mainly on the island of St. Lucia, but also visits other major locals and time frames. As to form, Walcott claimed in an interview that the epic poem [story] was written in hexameter, but more accurately it's loosely reminiscent of terza rima. The 'story' roughly mimics the Iliad, and uses some of the major characters names.

The book had a lot of praise from such as The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, and New Yorker, not mention wining some literary awards. All of which resulted in renewing my skepticism in following the sheep.

There were some parts I liked, so I gave it two stars instead of one. One and a half would be more accurate.
I guess I'm jus' not a high-brow :-)

When I finally found a copy of this poetry collection at the library, I couldn't remember why I'd added it in the first place; however, once I read the poem "Love After Love," I realized what had prompted me to look it up.

"The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love-letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."

Walcott's long poem resonated with my wanderer. That is, he captures the pitched experience of a traveler, wanderer, through physical space and through time. This is a personal history, at times almost like a lament for a life lived apart from one's true "home." Or instead of home where one originates. When I come back to this poem I intend to look at Walcott's perspective on the wanderer versus native although the idea didn't strike me too hard until the end. The journey in "The Prodigal" is one worth taking.

The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948–2013 draws from every stage of the poet's storied career. Here are examples of his very earliest work, like "In My Eighteenth Year," published when the poet himself was still a teenager; his first widely celebrated verse, like "A Far Cry from Africa," which speaks of violence, of loyalties divided in one's very blood; his mature work, like "The Schooner Flight" from The Star-Apple Kingdom; and his late masterpieces, like the tender "Sixty Years After," from the 2010 collection White Egrets.
Across sixty-five years, Walcott grapples with the themes that have defined his work as they have defined his life: the unsolvable riddle of identity; the painful legacy of colonialism on his native Caribbean island of St. Lucia; the mysteries of faith and love and the natural world; the Western canon, celebrated and problematic; the trauma of growing old, of losing friends, family, one's own memory. This collection, selected by Walcott's friend the English poet Glyn Maxwell, will prove as enduring as the questions, the passions, that have driven Walcott to write for more than half a century.

Simply extraordinary! Written by a poet at the height of his powers.

Simultaeneously such wonderful writing and a slog

Geïnspireerd door Homerus schrijft Walcott in drieregelige strofen het verhaal van de mensen in het Caraïbisch gebied, blanken en zwarten. Bij zwarten speelt hun familiegeschiedenis heel sterk mee: dromen, gevoelens uit Afrika komen veel voor, en het feit dat ze als slaaf naar het Caraïbisch gebied gebracht werden. Achilles en Hector zijn zwarten, en zij zijn verliefd op Helena, ook zwart. Helena werkt onder meer voor een blank echtpaar. Hij is ex-militair en hij probeert de geschiedenis van zee- en veldslagen op en rond het eiland te beschrijven.
Walcott schrijft dus geen verhaal dat op de Ilias of de Odyssee lijkt, maar verwerkt allerlei motieven daaruit en uit andere werken uit de literatuurgeschiedenis, in zijn eigen verhaal. Soms is het lastig om te begrijpen wie aan het woord is, vooral als tegen het eind van het verhaal de schrijver steeds vaker het woord lijkt te nemen.
Ik heb het niet zozeer als een doorlopend verhaal, maar meer als sfeertekening en schetsen van de gemoedstoestand van de personages gelezen.

This was a collection that was hit and miss. While some poems touched the sublime, giving me great ideas and food for thought, others fell short. Nevertheless, it's a thrilling collection and one that is not to be missed, especially for those who appreciate poetry. Walcott is a creative powerhouse, pushing through poem after poem. Impressive.

3.5 stars½

Dit is de tekst waarmee Han van der Vegts vertaling werd genomineerd voor de Filter Vertaalprijs 2018 -dus niet vooral een bespreking van Walcott's epos:
In Omeros (1990), een postkoloniale herschrijving van de Odyssee van Homerus en tevens een ode aan zijn geboorte-eiland Santa Lucia in de Caraïben, voert Derek Walcott geen grote figuren op, maar vissers, vrijbuiters en outcasts die zonder dat ze het zelf weten vage afspiegelingen zijn van de Homerische helden. Het lange, verhalende gedicht werd al in 1994, nadat Walcott in 1992 de Nobelprijs voor literatuur was toegekend, goed vertaald door de dichter Jan Eijkelboom, maar Han van der Vegt – zelf ook dichter en schrijver – geeft Omeros in zijn nieuwe vertaling een geheel eigen draai. Hij weet zijn lezers op poëtische wijze mee te voeren in de Caribische wereld van Walcott, die meandert tussen heden en verleden – inclusief verwijzingen naar de slaventijd – waarin de geur van visnetten hangt, bomen geslacht worden om tot kano te worden omgevormd en niet alleen goudmakrelen en roodbaarzen, zeeanemonen, hoornkoraal en kaurischelpen, maar ook treurduiven, glanstroepiaals en spotvogels de biosfeer bevolken. De exotische Caribische flora en fauna wordt door Van der Vegt heel zorgvuldig en precies vertaald en Walcotts associatieve reeks beelden en metaforen weet Van der Vegt op een verrassende manier in te vullen zodat een nieuw dichterlijk universum ontstaat.

‘[…] Bananenbladeren knikten in de rollende
gramschap van hanen, wier kreten gilden als rood krijt
dat heuvels tekent op een bord. De branding mopperde
net als zijn schoolmeester op zijn doelbewuste wijze
van lopen. […]’

In zijn vertaling levert Van der Vegt bovendien een technisch hoogstandje door het rijmschema dat Walcott hanteert in zijn bijna 8000 verzen tellende gedicht over te nemen. De tekst bestaat uit zeven delen die zijn opgebouwd uit 64 hoofdstukken. Elk hoofdstuk bestaat uit drie delen die op hun beurt weer bestaan uit drieregelige strofen in terza rima, dat wil zeggen dat elk rijm in de drieregelige strofen drie keer wordt gebruikt (aba bcb cdc). Van der Vegt doet dit consequent, en terwijl Walcott dit principe zelf niet overal toepast, hanteert de vertaler een lossere rijmvorm: geen volrijm zoals Walcott meestal gebruikt, maar klinkerrijm en enjambement. Dat resulteert niet in een geconstrueerd geheel, maar in vloeiende klankrijke en ritmische poëzie. Het pidgin-Engels dat sommige personages spreken, vertaalt Van der Vegt niet letterlijk, dat zou een simplificerend effect opleveren, maar hij laat ze gewone taal spreken en dat lukt hem uitstekend. De openingszin van het gedicht ‘“This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes”’ wordt bij Van der Vegt ‘“Zo gaat het als we de kano’s kappen bij zonsopgang”’. Elders lezen we: ‘“She happy, sir”’. Dat wordt ‘“Ze is gelukkig, meneer”.’
Van der Vegt weet eindeloos te variëren op de rijke woordenstroom van Walcott – de zee komt bijvoorbeeld voor in de meest uiteenlopende variaties – ‘de slag van branding die haar witte, sissende kraag uitspreidt over het kantwerk van de ree’ – en creëert zo een eigen poëtisch idioom. De Omeros van de dichter Van der Vegt is daarom niet alleen een virtuoze vertaling, maar ook een bijzonder, opzichzelfstaand nieuw gedicht.½

5. Omeros by Derek Walcott
published: 1990
format: 325 page Paperback
acquired: December
read: Jan 1-5, restarted Jan 8-18
rating: 5

From about 1667 to 1814, as the British and French fought for supremacy in the Caribbean and elsewhere, the strategically important island of St. Lucia was fought over numerous times and changed hands fourteen times. It became know as the "Helen of the West Indies". This is Walcott's pick-up point for his masterpiece.

It is, in its simplest sense, a story of the island of St. Lucia, one that brings in its history of conquest, extermination and slavery, and apparently the author's personal history, along with some selected context from around the world, and that focuses on the economic classes on the island, especially on the poverty. Walcott, in a magical touch, Homerizes everything. The poor islanders are given Homeric names, Achille, Hector, Philoctete, Helen and, of course, Omeros, who is blind. (Omeros is the phonetically correct spelling of the ancient Greek Author, Όμηρος.) Virgil's Sybil becomes Ma Kilman. The Englishman is named Denis Plunkett, and his Irish wife is Maud. The narrator never tells us his name, or that of his lost girlfriend he seeks to find or overcome, while neglecting his wife and children. Dante and Joyce leave their own traces, although I haven't read them couldn't appreciate this much.

Achille (pronounced A-sheel) and Hector do come to battle over Helen, Philoctete struggles with an infected and unhealing wound on his leg, and blind Omeros sees a great deal. And there is a vast finicky ocean to get lost in.

I've been shy to review this because I am not able to capture the impact of its language. The story is originally just context, an excuse for the expression Walcott makes of it. And it's astounding, even more so if you can apply Walcott's own voice, with its St. Lucian/Caribbean lilt. It's something to live in for a bit.

I found that I was ok following, and then about halfway through I was completely lost. (Achille is passed out on a boat, and winds his way to a river and then he's walking back across the ocean floor. I couldn't quite workout that he had gone backwards in time, to an African village along the banks of a large African river, even if I could get the generally hallucinatory feel.) So, I started using Shmoop, and then, as Walcott the narrator travels through the western major cities, bumping into James Joyce and whatnot, unnamed of course, I became completely dependent. I would read the Shmoop summary of a chapter first to get the story, then read the chapter itself for the language. Certainly a hackneyed way to read this. But it got me through with a degree of appreciation. If I was left with a sense it evolved for a time into something a little plot heavy, that probably says more about my reading style than the contents.

The overall impact for me was the sense of presence Walcott creates. Everything has a spiritual impact, or lives, in this language, in direct counter to that. Poverty, accidents, tourism, development all live as tragic counters to weakening divine spirits of these decedents of slavery. Parallels are brought in, heavily, with the extermination of the North American Indians, especially the well documented massacre at Wounded Knee, in 1890, in the midst of the ghost dance. Walcott, in interviews, says that he is angry. But his poem is not exactly, or not simply that. It's both more circumspect and, on the surface at least, pledging some variation of hope.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/279863#6353501

Walcott è il poeta adatto per chi non ama la poesia e vuole provare. Immagini potenti piene di colori e di turbini, la vegetazione dei sentimenti che copre i tetti delle vecchie case creole. Su tutto l'incombenza di un mare caraibico profondo come i nostri abissi: dalle viscere a Conrad senza passare per Alpitour.

This is a book to be slowly savoured rather than rushed. The vivid imagery is immediately noticeable, but it takes time to really feel the pace of the story. Even though I consider myself well-read, a well-annotated edition would have been helpful for me. I will reread this many times, I think, as it is deep and rich.

Poëzie is niet mijn ding, ik weet het. Dit boek stond al meer dan 20 jaar in mijn bibliotheek te wachten. Het is eindelijk gelukt om het vast te nemen en te lezen. Zeker in het begin was ik een beetje verloren, vooral door de overvloedige beeldrijke taal. Walcott gaat heel beschrijvend te werk in zijn poëzie, er zit niet zoveel actie en dialoog in. Toch is er wel een verhaal te traceren.
De thematische band met de Ilias van Homerus is best interessant (vooral de rivaliteit om een mooie vrouw), en de setting in de Caraïbische wereld (het eiland Sante Lucia) maakt het heel exotisch, en geeft het gedicht een origineel cachet. En dan zijn er nog de verspreid liggende stukjes waarin de auteur zelf aan het woord en in de kijker komt. In een prozawerk kan ik dat allemaal aan (ik heb uiteindelijk toch Joyce, Proust en tal van andere moeilijke schrijvers achter de kiezen), maar in dit meer dan 300 pagina's lange gedicht, lukte het me niet om er echt van te genieten. Ik weet het, spijtig, en het ligt waarschijnlijk aan mij. Misschien moet ik dit werk na mijn pensioen (toch nog een eindje te gaan) nog eens ter hand nemen. Hup, weer op het schap, jij.

My biggest complaint is that this volume is overwhelming -- too large to be appreciated in a 2-week library loan. If I owned this and could read the poems more slowly I would probably be giving it a higher rating. As it is, I just read about 300 pages before it had to be returned. Luckily my strategy of reading from about 6 different locations gave me a chance to experience at least a taste of each of the major selections included.

I found that my favorite section was from "White Egrets" although the "Midsummer" section ran a close second. I didn't care for the early work nearly as much as the later poetry.½

These poems are clearly the product of his later years (this book first came out in 2010) - the themes of aging and dying are pronounced throughout. I would love to now read some of his earlier work for comparison. I love the way Walcott uses color and images from nature in his poetry, especially the egrets that appear in many of these poems. I will just quote the closing sentences from the second verse of the poem "In the Village" about Greenwich Village in New York City:

"                                                                ... It is the hell
of ordinary, unrequited love. Watch those egrets
trudging the lawn in a dishevelled troop, white banners
trailing forlornly; they are the bleached regrets
of an old man's memoirs, printed stanzas
showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets."½

The Nobel Prize was awarded for this Homeric poem -- and the announcement was the discovery of gold in the Caribbean archipelago! "Omeros" is the title of this long and interconnected poem -- broken out in easily-read Danteian terza rima (for the most part). The title is from the way a beautiful woman pronounced the protagonist fisherman's name -- "Homer". And the "Om" invokes the revenant spirit of the conch, "mer" is a word for mother, and "os" is a word for bone. Just sayin'....

There are many--and I am one--who avoid long poems, or "poetry" of pointless tale-telling and irritating similes that avoid telling a good tale. Walcott provides a robust tale--this is an Odessian romp through the tree-falls and archipelago of the Caribbean. And it is filled with jewels, and joys and pains. Irony is the salvation in the struggle with colonials and slaves, all of whom are struggling with consciousness. Homer himself takes a turn in narrating this semi-autobiographical unveiling of a wounded Achilles. There are many allusions to historical events--the islands passed from one colonial power to another after various battles. There are many echoes and nods to mythology--the role of a beauty among tribes haunted by sex. But this is not knotted obscurity like trying to read a Pound-ed cant Canto. This poetry is vivid and accessible -- filled with moist surprises, just like a jungle. You don't have to read, or long for, footnotes to "explain" the meaning.

I laughed and wept, and felt enriched. And relieved that I was able to sail off with treasure and without the burden of having had to pillage the smoking village and slaughter any stinking pirates and naval pretenders.

Poet and painter Derek Walcott uses one form of artistic expression to contemplate the other in a book-length poem. Walcott compares and contrasts himself as an artist with 19th-century impressionist Camille Pissarro, who, like Walcott, was born in the West Indies. Themes that run through the poem include nature, time, inspiration, Old vs. New world, and the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Reading poetry is harder work than reading prose, and I found that reading aloud to my dog helped maintain my concentration and enhanced my appreciation of the work.½

I read this when it came out, and was startled by its ductile grandeur and directness. I aloudread it to various students, in classes, and in large gatherings, for several years. It is simply the best re-working of the Odyssey since Joyce's Ulysses. And of course, Walcott has the daring of poetry; Joyce collapsed into prose.
A decade ago I had maybe fifty lines by heart, in short passages, simply because I had aloudread it enough to remember them. The only one that stays with me in my decline is the one a tried--and failed--to say to the author when he was signing books at a community college convention in Portsmouth, NH (I think). Waiting in a long line, I brought my copy from home to him, and tried to say the very last line, "The moon shone like a slice of raw onion." But my voice failed me, only the second time in my life: the first was in third grade, in a Christmas pageant, where I had trouble reading the Luke story in front of an audience.
By the way, Walcott's multi-linguality does not really come through in the poem, and maybe it shouldn't; but here is a man for whom English may be the second or third language he learned as a child, after Creole and perhaps French. I think he may have read some Homer in Greek as well.

Saint Lucia


This book-length poem in sections, most in blank verse (iambic pentameter or a foot or two more per line), ranges across countries, moods, and relationships to create a memoir/travelogue spanning time and continents. Walcott always turns a pretty phrase; here, I admire his use of repetition, which includes both phrases and images. These reiterations echo both the repetitions--with variations--of the landscapes, and foreground the reader's awareness of language. The poem itself seems to serve as an Ariadne's thread to guide the poet, and reader, back to Saint Lucia and the opportunity to come to terms with his own aging and mortality.

Latin name -Ardea alba

Family - Bitterns and herons(Ardeidae)

The Great White Egret, is almost identical to little Egrets, but obviously they are much larger – around the same size as a Grey Heron. The identification features to be aware of are, black feet as opposed to yellow, and a yellow beak (in juvenile and non-breeding plumage), they also use a different fishing technique like that of the grey heron, living off fish, insects and frogs, caught by spearing with its long, sharp beak.





White Egrets is also the title of the Fourteenth collection of poetry from Derek Walcott. Born in St Lucia in 1930, he studied at the University College of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica). Walcott published his first poem at 14 and by 19 had self-published his two first collections - 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949) which he distributed himself. But it was his collection - In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962) exploring the Caribbean and it’s history in a colonialist and post-colonialist context that saw him gain an international public profile. He has since published eight collections of plays, a collection of essays, as well as his volumes of poetry, including an epic poem (Omeros), in which he invokes the spirit and people of his homeland through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In 1992 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he is also an honorary member of the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters.

This his latest collection won this years T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the chair for this years prize was Anne Stevenson & she said that

"the judges felt that Derek Walcott's White Egrets was a moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet."

In this collection of poetry, “Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects – the Caribbean’s complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucía, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccommodating sublime of the new world, times cunning passages, the poets place in all of this – with a passionate intensity and drive that rivals his greatest work” .

Yet reading these poems you soon realise another figure stalks the landscape, that with the passing of time, there’s loss, there’s death, whether this is of friends, or the death of love, or just unrequited love, stillborn with regret. In these beautiful poems you get visions of a man looking back on his life, looking back with regret, with humour, but looking back from the perspective that this may be his last call, but this is a not a legacy, there is too much passion for that.

http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/white-egrets-by-derek-walcott.html