Selected Poems

by Walcott, Derek; Baugh, Edward

• ISBN13: 9780374260668
• ISBN10: 0374260664
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-09
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

Drawing from every stage of his career, Derek Walcott'sSelected Poemsbrings together famous pieces from his early volumes, including "A Far Cry from Africa" and "A City's Death by Fire," with passages from the celebratedOmerosand selections from his latest major works, which extend his contributions to reenergizing the contemporary long poem. Here we find all of Walcott's essential themes, from grappling with the Caribbean's colonial legacy to his conflicted love of home and of Western literary tradition; from the wisdom-making pain of time and mortality to the strange wonder of love, the natural world, and what it means to be human. We see his lifelong labor at poetic crafts, his broadening of the possibilities of rhyme and meter, stanza forms, language, and metaphor. Edited and with an introduction by the Jamaican poet and critic Edward Baugh, this volume is a perfect representation of Walcott's breadth of work, spanning almost half a century.

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

Introduction
From In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960(1962)
Prelude As John to Patmos
A City's Death by Fire
A Far Cry from African Ruins of a Great House
Tales of the Islands Return to D'Ennery; Rain
A Letter from Brooklyn Islands
From The Castaway and Other Poems(1965)
The Castaway Tarpon
The Flock Laventille
The Almond Trees Verandah Crusoe's Island Codicil
From The Gulf and Other Poems(1969)
Mass Man Homage to Edward Thomas
The Gulf Blues Air Landfall, Grenada Homecoming: Anse La Raye Nearing Forty
From Another Life(1973)
"Verandahs, where the pages of the sea"
"In its dimensions the drawing could not trace"
"Maman, / only on Sundays was the Singer silent"
"Old house, old woman, old room"
"About the August of my fourteenth year"
"Our father, / who floated in the vaults of Michangelo"
"Noon, / and its sacred water sprinkles"
"Who could tell, in 'the crossing of that pair'"
"There are already, invisible on canvas"
"Where did I fail? I could draw"
"When the oil green water glows but doesn't catch"
"Smug, behind glass, we watch the passengers"
"Miasma, acedia, the enervations of damp"
From Sea Grapes(1976)
Sea Grapes Adam's Song
The Cloud Parades, Parades
The Bright Field Sainte Lucie Volcano
Sea Canes Midsummer, Tobago Oddjob, a Bull Terrier
To Return to the Tress
From The Star-Apple Kingdom(1979)
The SchoonerFlight
Adios, Carenge
Shabine Leaves the Republic
The Flight, Passing Blanchisseuse
Shabine Encounters the Middle Passage
The Sailor Sings Back to the Casuarinas
The Flight Anchors in Castries Harbour
Fight with the Crew
Out of the Depths
After the Storm
The Sea Is History
The Saddhu of Couva Forest of Europe
From The Fortunate Traveller(1981)
Piano Europa
The Spoiler's Return
Early Pompeian
The Fortunate Traveller
The Season of Phantasmal Peace
From Midsummer(1984)
"The jet bores like a silverfish through volumes of cloud"
"Companion in Rome, whom Rome makes as old as Rome"
"Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn"
"A wind-scraped headland, a sludgy dishwater sea"
"Since all of your work was really an effort to appease"
"There was one Syrian, with his bicycle, in our town"
"The midsummer sea, the hot pitch road, this grass, these shacks that made me"
From The Arkansas Testament(1987)
Saint Lucia's First Communion
The Light of the World Night Fishing
Elsewhere Winter Lamps For Adrian
The Arkansas Testament
From Omeros (1990)
"'This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes'"
"'Touchez-i, encore: N'ai fendre choux-ous-ou, salope!'"
"I sat on the white terrace waiting for the cheque"
"How fast it fades! Maud thought; the enameled sky"
"From his heart's depth he knew she was never coming"
"Mangrove, their ankles in water, walked with the canoe"
"I sang of quiet Achille, Afolabe's son"
From The Bounty(1997)	p. 4
Thanksgiving	p. 14
"Never get used to this; the feathery, swaying casuarinas"	p. 24
"Alphaeus Prince, What a name! He was one of the Princes"	p. 26
"The sublime always begins with the chord 'And then I saw'"	p. 27
"Praise to the rain, eraser of picnics, praise the grey cloud"	p. 31
Italian Eclogues I
"On the bright road to
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