Collected Poems, 1948-1984

by Walcott, Derek

• ISBN13: 9780374520250
• ISBN10: 0374520259
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-01-01
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

This remarkable collection, which won the 1986 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, includes most of the poems from each of Derek Walcott's seven prior books of verse and all of his long autobiographical poem, "Another Life." The 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Walcott has been producing--for several decades--a poetry with all the beauty, wisdom, directness, and narrative force of our classic myths and fairy tales, and in this hefty volume readers will find a full record of his important endeavor. "Walcott's virutes as a poet are extraordinary," James Dickey wrote in The New York Times Book Review. "He could turn his attention on anything at all and make it live with a reality beyond its own; through his fearless language it becomes not only its acquired life, but the real one, the one that lasts . . . Walcott is spontaneous, headlong, and inventive beyond the limits of most other poets now writing."

Author Biography

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930. He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, seven collections of plays, and a book of essays. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Table of Contents

from In a Green Night Poems 1948-1960 [1962]
Prelude	p. 3
As John to Patmos	p. 5
A City's Death by Fire	p. 6
The Harbour	p. 7
from Selected Poems [1964]
Origins	p. 11
from In a Green Night (1962)
A Far Cry from Africa	p. 17
Ruins of a Great House	p. 19
Tales of the Islands	p. 22
Return to D'Ennery; Rain	p. 28
Pocomania	p. 31
Parang	p. 33
Two Poems on the Passing of an Empire	p. 35
Orient and Immortal Wheat	p. 36
A Lesson for This Sunday	p. 38
Bleecker Street, Summer	p. 40
A Letter from Brooklyn	p. 41
Brise Marine	p. 43
A Sea-Chantey	p. 44
The Polish Rider	p. 47
The Banyan Tree, Old Year's Night	p. 48
In a Green Night	p. 50
Islands	p. 52
from The Castaway and Other Poems [1965]
The Castaway	p. 57
The Swamp	p. 59
Tarpon	p. 61
Missing the Sea	p. 63
The Glory Trumpeter	p. 64
A Map of Europe	p. 66
Nights in the Gardens of Port of Spain	p. 67
Crusoe's Island	p. 68
Coral	p. 73
from The Gulf [1970]
from The Castaway and Other Poems (1965)
The Flock	p. 77
A Village Life	p. 79
Goats and Monkeys	p. 83
Laventille	p. 85
Verandah	p. 89
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen	p. 91
Crusoe's Journal	p. 92
Lampfall	p. 95
Codicil	p. 97
from The Gulf and Other Poems (1969)
Mass Man	p. 99
Exile	p. 100
Homage to Edward Thomas	p. 103
The Gulf	p. 104
Elegy	p. 109
Blues	p. 111
Air	p. 113
Guyana	p. 115
Che	p. 123
Negatives	p. 124
Landfall, Grenada	p. 125
Homecoming: Anse La Raye	p. 127
Star	p. 130
Cold Spring Harbor	p. 131
Love in the Valley	p. 133
Nearing Forty	p. 136
The Walk	p. 138
Another Life [1973]
The Divided Child	p. 143
Homage to Gregorias	p. 189
A Simple Flame	p. 223
The Estranging Sea	p. 259
from Sea Grapes [1976]
Sea Grapes	p. 297
Sunday Lemons	p. 298
New World	p. 300
Adam's Song	p. 302
Preparing for Exile	p. 304
Names	p. 305
Sainte Lucie	p. 309
Volcano	p. 324
Endings	p. 326
The Fist	p. 327
Love after Love	p. 328
Dark August	p. 329
Sea Canes	p. 331
Midsummer, Tobago	p. 333
Oddjob, a Bull Terrier	p. 334
Winding Up	p. 336
The Morning Moon	p. 338
To Return to the Trees	p. 339
from the Star-Apple Kingdom [1979]
The Schooner Flight	p. 345
Sabbaths, W.I.	p. 362
The Sea Is History	p. 364
Egypt, Tobago	p. 368
The Saddhu of Couva	p. 372
Forest of Europe	p. 375
Koenig of the River	p. 379
The Star-Apple Kingdom	p. 383
from the Fortunate Traveller [1981]
Old New England	p. 399
Upstate	p. 401
Piano Practice	p. 403
North and South	p. 405
Beachhead	p. 410
Map of the New World	p. 413
From This Far	p. 414
Europa	p. 418
The Man Who Loved Islands	p. 420
Hurucan	p. 423
Jean Rhys	p. 427
The Liberator	p. 430
The Spoiler's Return	p. 432
The Hotel Normandie Pool	p. 439
Early Pompeian	p. 446
Easter	p. 452
Wales	p. 455
The Fortunate Traveller	p. 456
The Season of Phantasmal Peace	p. 464
from Midsummer [1984]
II - Companion in Rome, whom Rome makes as old as Rome	p. 469
III - At the Queen's Park Hotel, with its white, high-ceilinged rooms	p. 471
VI - Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn	p. 472
VII - Our houses are one step from the gutter. Plastic curtains	p. 474
XI - My double, tired of morning, closes the door	p. 475
XIV - With the frenzy of an old snake shedding its skin	p. 476
XV - I can sense it coming from far, too, Maman, the tide	p. 477
XVIII - In the other'eighties, a hundred midsummers gone	p. 478
XIX - Gauguin	p. 479
XX - Watteau	p. 481
XXI - A long, white, summer cloud, like a cleared linen table	p. 482
XXIII - With the stampeding hiss and scurry of green lemmings	p. 483
XXV - The sun has fired my face to terra-cotta	p. 484
XXVI - Before that thundercloud breaks from its hawsers	p. 485
XXVII - Certain things here are quietly American-	p. 486
XXVIII - Something primal in our spine makes the child swing	p. 488
XXX - Gold dung and urinous straw from the horse garages	p. 489
XXXIII - Those grooves in that forehead of sand-coloured flesh	p. 490
XXXV - Mud. Clods. The sucking heel of the rain-flinger	p. 491
XXXVI - The oak inns creak in their joints as light declines	p. 492
XXXIX - The grey English road hissed emptily under the tires	p. 493
XLI - The camps hold their distance-brown chestnuts and grey smoke	p. 494
XLII - Chicago's avenues, as white as Poland	p. 495
XLIII - Tropic Zone	p. 496
XLIX - A wind-scraped headland, a sludgy, dishwater sea	p. 503
L - I once gave my daughters, separately, two conch shells	p. 504
LI - Since all of your work was really an effort to appease	p. 505
LII - I heard them marching the leaf-wet roads of my head	p. 506
LIII - There was one Syrian, with his bicycle, in our town	p. 508
LIV - The midsummer sea, the hot pitch road, this grass, these shacks that made me	p. 510
Books of Poetry by Derek Walcott	p. 512
Index of Titles	p. 513
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.