Walcott, Derek (Alton) 1930-

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WALCOTT, Derek (Alton) 1930-

PERSONAL: Born January 23, 1930, in Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies; son of Warwick (a civil servant, poet, and visual artist) and Alix (a teacher) Walcott; married Fay Moston, 1954 (divorced, 1959); married Margaret Ruth Maillard, 1962 (divorced); married Norline Metivier (an actress and dancer), 1982 (divorced); children: (first marriage) Peter, (second marriage) two daughters. Education: Attended St. Mary's College (St. Lucia); University of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica), B.A. 1953.

ADDRESSES: Home—(summer) 165 Duke of Edinburgh Ave., Diego Martin, Trinidad and Tobago; (winter) 71 St. Mary's, Boston, MA 02215. Office—Creative Writing Department, Boston University, 236 Bay State Rd., Boston, MA 02215. Agent—Bridget Aschenberg, International Famous Agency, 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Poet and playwright. Teacher at St. Mary's College, Castries, St. Lucia, West Indies, 1947-50 and 1954, Grenada Boys' Secondary School, St. George's, Grenada, West Indies, 1953-54, and at Jamaica College, Kingston, 1955. Feature writer, 1960-62, and drama critic, 1963-68, for Trinidad Guardian (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad); feature writer for Public Opinion (Kingston), 1956-57. Cofounder of St. Lucia Arts Guild, 1950, and Basement Theatre, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; founding director of Little Carib Theatre Workshop (later Trinidad Theatre Workshop), 1959-76; Boston University, assistant professor of creative writing, 1981, visiting professor, 1985, currently professor

of English. Visiting professor at Columbia University, 1981, and Harvard University, 1982 and 1987. Also lecturer at Rutgers University and Yale University.

AWARDS, HONORS: Rockefeller grant, 1957, 1966, and fellowship, 1958; Jamaica Drama Festival prize, 1958, for Drums and Colours: An Epic Drama; Arts Advisory Council of Jamaica prize, 1960; Guinness Award, 1961, for "A Sea-Chantey"; Borestone Mountain poetry awards, 1964, for "Tarpon," and 1977, for "Midsummer, England"; Ingram Merrill Foundation grant, 1962; named fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1966; Heinemann Award, Royal Society of Literature, 1966, for The Castaway, and 1983, for The Fortunate Traveller; Cholmondeley Award, 1969, for The Gulf; Eugene O'Neill Foundation-Wesleyan University fellowship, 1969; Gold Hummingbird Medal, Order of the Hummingbird, Trinidad and Tobago, 1969 (one source says 1979); Obie Award, 1971, for Dream on Monkey Mountain; honorary doctorate of letters, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1972; O.B.E. (Officer, Order of British Empire), 1972; Jock Campbell/New Statesman Prize, 1974, for Another Life; Guggenheim fellowship, 1977; named honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1979; American Poetry Review Award, 1979; International Writer's Prize, Welsh Arts Council, 1980; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant, 1981; Los Angeles Times Prize in poetry, 1986, for Collected Poems, 1948-1984; Queen Elizabeth II Gold Medal for Poetry, 1988; Nobel Prize for literature, 1992; St. Lucia Cross, 1993.

WRITINGS:

poetry

25 Poems, Guardian Commercial Printery (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad), 1948.

Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos, Barbados Advocate (Bridgetown, Barbados), 1949.

Poems, Kingston City Printery (Kingston, Jamaica), 1953.

In a Green Night: Poems, J. Cape (London, England), 1962, published as In a Green Night: Poems, 1948-1960, J. Cape (London, England), 1969.

Selected Poems, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1964.

The Castaway, J. Cape (London, England), 1965.

The Gulf and Other Poems, J. Cape (London, England), 1969, published with selections from The Castaway as The Gulf: Poems, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.

Another Life (long poem), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1973, 2nd edition published with introduction, chronology and selected bibliography by Robert D. Hammer, Three Continents Press (Washington, DC), 1982.

Sea Grapes, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1976.

Selected Verse, Heinemann (London, England), 1976.

The Star-Apple Kingdom, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1979.

The Fortunate Traveller, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1981.

Selected Poetry, selected, annotated, and introduced by Wayne Brown, Heinemann (London, England), 1981, revised edition, 1993.

The Caribbean Poetry of Derek Walcott and the Art of Romare Beardon, Limited Editions Club (New York, NY), 1983.

Midsummer, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1984.

Collected Poems, 1948-1984, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1986.

The Arkansas Testament, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1987.

Omeros, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1990.

Collected Poems, Faber (London, England), 1990.

Poems, 1965-1980, J. Cape (London, England), 1992.

Derek Walcott: Selected Poems, Longman (London, England), 1993.

The Bounty, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1997.

Tiepolo's Hound, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2000.

Contributor of poems to numerous periodicals, including New Statesman, London Magazine, Encounter, Evergreen Review, Caribbean Quarterly, Tamarack Review, and Bim.

plays

Cry for a Leader, produced in St. Lucia, 1950.

Senza Alcum Sospetto (radio play), broadcast 1950, produced as Paolo and Francesca, in St. Lucia, 1951.

(And director) Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes (first produced in Castries, West Indies, 1950; produced in London, England, 1952), Barbados Advocate (Bridgetown, Barbados), 1950.

Robin and Andrea, published in Bim (Christ Church, Barados), 1950.

Three Assassins, produced in St. Lucia, West Indies, 1951.

The Price of Mercy, produced in St. Lucia, West Indies, 1951.

(And director) Harry Dernier: A Play for Radio Production (produced in Mona, Jamaica, 1952; radio play broadcast as Dernier, 1952), Barbados Advocate (Bridgetown, Barbados), 1952.

(And director) The Wine of the Country (produced in Mona, Jamaica, 1956), University College of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica), 1953.

The Sea at Dauphin: A Play in One Act (first produced in Mona, Jamaica, 1953; produced in Trinidad, 1954, London, England, 1960, New York, NY, 1978), Extra-Mural Department, University College of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica), 1954, also included in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (also see below).

Crossroads, produced in Jamaica, 1954.

(And director) The Charlatan, Walcott directed first production in Mona, Jamaica, 1954; revised version with music by Fred Hope and Rupert Dennison produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1973; revised version with music by Galt MacDermot produced in Los Angeles, 1974; revised version produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1977.

Ione: A Play with Music (first produced in Kingston, 1957), Extra-Mural Department, University College of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica), 1957.

Drums and Colours: An Epic Drama (first produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1958), published in Caribbean Quarterly, March-June, 1961.

(And director) Ti-Jean and His Brothers (first produced in Castries, St. Lucia, 1957; Walcott directed a revised version produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1958; produced in Hanover, NH, 1971; Walcott directed a production Off-Broadway at Delacorte Theatre, 1972; produced in London, 1986), included in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (also see below).

Malcauchon; or, The Six in the Rain (sometimes "Malcauchon" transliterated as "Malcochon"; one-act; first produced as Malcauchon in Castries, St. Lucia, 1959; produced as Six in the Rain, in London, England, 1960; produced Off-Broadway at St. Mark's Playhouse, 1969), Extra-Mural Department, University of West Indies (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad), 1966, also included in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (also see below).

Jourmard; or, A Comedy till the Last Minute, first produced in St. Lucia, 1959; produced in New York, NY, 1962.

(And director) Batai (carnival show), produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1965.

(And director) Dream on Monkey Mountain (first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1967; produced in Waterford, CT, 1969; and Off-Broadway at St. Mark's Playhouse, 1970), included in Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (also see below).

(And director) Franklin: A Tale of the Islands, first produced in Georgetown, Guyana, 1969; Walcott directed a revised version produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1973.

Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (contains Dream on Monkey Mountain, The Sea at Dauphin, Malcauchon; or, The Six in the Rain, Ti-Jean and His Brothers, and the essay "What the Twilight Says: An Overture"), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.

(And director) In a Fine Castle, (Walcott directed first production in Mona, Jamaica, 1970; produced in Los Angeles, CA, 1972), excerpt as Conscience of a Revolution published in Express (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad), October 24, 1971.

The Joker of Seville (musical; music by Galt MacDermot; adaptation of the play by Tirso de Molina; first produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1974), included in The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!: Two Plays (also see below).

(And director) O Babylon! (music by Galt MacDermot; Walcott directed first production in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1976; produced in London, England, 1988), included in The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!: Two Plays (also see below).

(And director) Remembrance (three-act; Walcott directed first production in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, December, 1977; produced Off-Broadway at The Other Stage, 1979; and London, England, 1980), included in Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays (also see below).

The Snow Queen (television play), excerpt published in People (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad), April, 1977.

Pantomime (first produced in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, 1978; produced London, England, 1979, Washington, DC, 1981, and Off-Broadway at the Hudson Guild Theater, 1986), included in Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays (also see below).

The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!: Two Plays, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1978.

(And director) Marie Laveau (music by Galt MacDermot; first produced in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, 1979), excerpts published in Trinidad and Tobago Review (Tunapuna), 1979.

Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1980.

Beef, No Chicken (Walcott directed first production in New Haven, CT, 1982; produced in London, England, 1989), included in Three Plays (also see below).

The Isle Is Full of Noises, first produced at the John W. Huntington Theater, Hartford, CT, 1982.

Three Plays (contains The Last Carnival, Beef, No Chicken, and A Branch of the Blue Nile), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1986.

Steel, first produced at the American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA, 1991.

The Odyssey: A Stage Version, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Paul Simon) The Capeman: A Musical (produced on Broadway at the Marquis Theater, December, 1997), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.

The Haitian Trilogy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York, NY), 2002.

Also author of the play To Die for Grenada.

other

Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes, Barbados Advocate (Bridgetown, Barbados), 1950.

Another Life: Fully Annotated, Lynne Rienner Publishers (Boulder, CO), reprinted with a critical essay and comprehensive notes by Edward Baugh and Colbert Nepaulsingh, 2004.

The Poet in the Theatre, Poetry Book Society (London, England), 1990.

The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory: The Nobel Lecture, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1993.

Conversations with Derek Walcott, edited by William Baer, University of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1996.

(With Joseph Brodsky and Seamus Heaney) Homage to Robert Frost, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.

What the Twilight Says (essays), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1998.

Tiepolo's Hound, Farrar, Strauss (New York, NY), 2000.

Walker and Ghost Dance, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2002.

contributor

John Figueroa, editor, Caribbean Voices, Evans (London, England), 1966.

Barbara Howes, editor, From the Green Antilles, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1966.

Howard Sergeant, editor, Commonwealth Poems of Today, Murray (London, England), 1967.

O. R. Dathorne, editor, Caribbean Verse, Heinemann (London, England), 1968.

Anne Walmsley, compiler, The Sun's Eye: West Indian Writing for Young Readers, Longmans, Green (London, England) 1968.

Orde Coombs, editor, Is Massa Day Dead?, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1974.

D. J. Enright, editor, Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, 1945-1980, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1980.

Errol Hill, editor, Plays for Today, Longman (London, England), 1985.

(Author of introduction) George Plimpton, editor, Latin American Writers at Work, Modern Library (New York, NY), 2003.

Also contributor to Caribbean Literature, edited by George Robert Coulthard; New Voices of the Commonwealth, edited by Howard Sergeant; and Young Commonwealth Poetry, edited by Peter Ludwig Brent.

Some of Walcott's personal papers are housed at the University of the West Indies in Saint Augustine, Trinidad.

SIDELIGHTS: Upon awarding Derek Walcott the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, the Swedish Academy, as quoted in the Detroit Free Press, wrote: "In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet." Walcott was the first native Caribbean writer to win the prize. Although born of mixed racial and ethnic heritage on St. Lucia, a West Indian island where a French/English patois is spoken, poet and playwright Derek Walcott was educated as a British subject. Taught to speak English as a second language, he grew skilled in his adopted tongue. His use of the language drew praise from critics, including British poet and novelist Robert Graves who, according to Times Literary Supplement contributor Vicki Feaver, "has gone as far to state that [Walcott] handles English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most (if not all) of his English-born contemporaries." "Walcott has had to contend with the charge that he is so deeply influenced by Western tradition that he has yet to achieve his own voice. Yet this scion of African and European heritage embodies the cultural matrix of the New World. Thus, inevitable questions of origins, identity, and the creation of meaningful order in a chaotic world lead Walcott to themes that transcend race, place, and time," remarked Robert D. Hamner in the Dictionary of LiteraryBiography. "In his literary works," noted the Swedish Academy in its citation, "Walcott has laid a course for his own cultural environment, but through them he speaks to each and every one of us." Among Walcott's "central concerns," delineated Bruce King in Contemporary Poets, "are the existence of evil, especially in the form of political tyranny and racial hatred … his relationship to time, death, and God….and his [feelings of] estrangement."

The major theme of Walcott's writing is the dichotomy between black and white, subject and ruler, and the elements of both Caribbean and Western civilization present in his culture and ancestry. In "What the Twilight Says," the introduction to Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, Walcott refers to his "schizophrenic boyhood," in which he led "two lives: the interior life of poetry [and] the outward life of action and dialect." In his study Derek Walcott, Robert D. Hamner noted that this "schizophrenia" is common among West Indians and comments further that "since [Walcott] is descended from a white grandfather and a black grandmother on both paternal and maternal sides, he is living example of the divided loyalties and hatreds that keep his society suspended between two worlds."

"As a West Indian … writing in English, with Africa and England in his blood," Alan Shapiro wrote in the Chicago Tribune Book World, "Walcott is inescapably the victim and beneficiary of the colonial society in which he was reared. He is a kind of Caribbean Orestes … unable to satisfy his allegiance to one side of his nature without at the same time betraying the other." Caryl Phillips described Walcott's work in much the same way in a Los Angeles Times Book Review essay. The critic noted that Walcott's poetry was "steeped in an ambivalence toward the outside world and its relationship to his own native land of St. Lucia."

One often-quoted poem, "A Far Cry from Africa," from In a Green Night: Poems, 1948-1960, deals directly with Walcott's sense of cultural confusion. "Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? / I who have cursed / The drunken officer of British rule, how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? / Betray them both, or give back what they give?" In another poem, "The Schooner Flight," from his collection The Star-Apple Kingdom, the poet used a Trinidadian sailor named Shabine to appraise his own place as a person of mixed blood in a world divided into whites and blacks. According to the mariner: "The first chain my hands and apologize, History the next said I wasn't black enough for their pride." Not white enough for whites, not black enough for blacks, Shabine sums up the complexity of his situation near the beginning of the poem, saying: "I had a sound colonial education, / I have Dutch, nigger and English in me,! / and either I'm nobody or I'm a nation."

It was Walcott, of course, who spoke, and New York Review of Books contributor Thomas R. Edwards noted how the poet suffered the same fate as his poetic alterego, Shabine. Edwards wrote, "Walcott is a cultivated cosmopolitan poet who is black, and as such he risks irrelevant praise as well as blame, whites finding it clever of him to be able to sound so much like other sophisticated poets, blacks feeling that he's sold his soul by practicing white arts."

Although pained by the contrasts in his background, Walcott chose to embrace both his island and his colonial heritage. His love of both sides of his psyche was apparent in his work. As Hamner noted in his study Derek Walcott: "Nurtured on oral tales of gods, devils, and cunning tricksters passed down by generations of slaves, Walcott should retell folk stories; and he does. On the other hand, since he has an affinity for and is educated in Western classics, he should retell the traditional themes of European experience; and he does. As inheritor of two vitally rich cultures, he utilizes one, then the other, and finally creates out of the two his own personalized style."

"Many of [Walcott's] early poems attempt to see both sides of his racial heritage," noted King, informing: "Walcott's volumes after The Castaway note his increasing alienation from the actual society of Saint Lucia while presenting him as part of Caribbean history, whether representative of a group of artists, a generation discovering West Indianness, or the alienated, nonconforming 'red' (colored) among blacks and whites. He often later returns to the same story, adding disillusionments, divorces, exile, nostalgia, and a larger body of acquaintances and places, commenting on the continuing injustices of a world in which the powerful enslave and suppress the weak; he is aware too that he is aging and threatened by the approach of death."

Walcott seems closest to his island roots in his plays. For the most part, he reserves his native language—patois or creole—to them. They also feature Caribbean settings and themes. According to Literary Review contributor David Mason, through his plays Walcott hopes to create a "catalytic theater responsible for social change or at least social identity."

Although a volume of poems was his first published work, Walcott originally concentrated his efforts on the theater. In 1950, two years after Walcott used two-hundred borrowed dollars to print and self-distribute (via street corners) his poetry debut, 25 Poems, he and his twin brother founded St. Lucia Arts Guild. The importance of this, according to Hamner in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, was that it was "the first time Derek could cast, direct, and produce plays as he wrote them." Hamner explained, "The event is fortuitous because Walcott's creativity is evolutionary. His normal practice is to improvise and revise material even while it is in the middle of a production run."

During the fifties, Walcott wrote a series of plays in verse, including Henri Christophe: A Chronicle in Seven Scenes, The Sea at Dauphin: A Play in One Act, and Ione: A Play with Music. The first play deals with an episode in Caribbean history: ex-slave Henri Christophe's rise to kingship of Haiti in the early 1800s. The second marks Walcott's first use of the mixed French/English language of his native island in a play. Dennis Jones noted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1981 that while Walcott uses the folk idiom of the islands in the play, the speech of the characters is not strictly imitative. It is instead "made eloquent, as the common folk represented in the work are made noble, by the magic of the artist."

In "What the Twilight Says" Walcott describes his use of language in his plays. In particular, he expresses a desire to mold "a language that went beyond mimicry,… one which finally settled on its own mode of inflection, and which begins to create an oral culture, of chants, jokes, folk-songs, and fables." The presence of "chants, jokes, and fables" in Walcott's plays caused critics such as Jones and the Los Angeles Times critic Juana Duty Kennedy to use the term "folk dramas" to describe the playwright's best pieces for theater. In Books and Bookmen Romilly Cavan observed the numerous folk elements in Walcott's plays: "The laments of superstitious fishermen, charcoal-burners and prisoners are quickly counter-pointed by talking crickets, frogs, and birds. Demons are raised, dreams take actual shape, [and] supernatural voices mingle with the natural lilting elliptical speech rhythms of downtrodden natives." Animals who speak and a folk-representation of the devil, for example, were characters in the play Ti-Jean and His Brothers.

Walcott's most highly praised play, Dream on Monkey Mountain, is also a folk drama. It was awarded a 1971 Obie Award and called "a poem in dramatic form" by Edith Oliver in the New Yorker. The play's title is itself enough to immediately transport the viewer into the superstitious, legend-filled world of the Caribbean back country. In the play, Walcott draws a parallel between the hallucinations of an old charcoal vendor and the colonial reality of the Caribbean. Islanders subjected to the imposition of a colonial culture on their own eventually question the validity of both cultures. Ultimately, they may determine that their island culture—because it has no official status other than as an enticement for tourists—is nothing but a sterile hallucination. Conversely, as Jones noted, they may reach the conclusion at which Walcott wished his audience to reach: the charcoal vendor's "dreams connect to the past, and that it is in that past kept alive in the dreams of the folk that an element of freedom is maintained in the colonized world."

Reviews by some American critics have reflected their apparent unfamiliarity with the Caribbean reality which Walcott described in his plays. For example, while Walter Goodman wrote in the New York Times that Walcott's Pantomime "stays with you as a fresh and funny work filled with thoughtful insights and illuminated by bright performances," Frank Rich's comments on the play in the same newspaper were not as favorable. "Walcott's best writing has always been as a poet …," Rich observed, "and that judgment remains unaltered by Pantomime. For some reason, [Walcott] refuses to bring the same esthetic rigor to his playwriting that he does to his powerfully dense verse."

In James Atlas's New York Times Magazine essay on Walcott, the critic confronted Rich's remarks head on, and explained that the poet would respond to Rich by commenting "that he doesn't conceive of his plays as finished works but as provisional effects to address his own people. 'The great challenge to me,' he says, 'was to write as powerfully as I could without writing down to the audience, so that the large emotions could be taken in by a fisherman or a guy on the street, even if he didn't understand every line.'"

If Walcott's plays reveal what is most Caribbean about him, his poetry reveals what is most English. If he hoped to reach the common person in his plays, the same cannot be said of his poetry. His poems are based on the traditional forms of English poetry, filled with classical allusions, elaborate metaphors, complex rhyme schemes, and other sophisticated poetic devices. In the New York Times Book Review, Selden Rodman called Walcott's poems "almost Elizabethan in their richness." The New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani also recognized British influences in Walcott's poetry, noting that "from England, [Walcott] appropriated an old-fashioned love of eloquence, an Elizabethan richness of words and a penchant for complicated, formal rhymes. In fact, in a day when more and more poets have adopted a grudging, minimalist style, [his] verse remains dense and elaborate, filled with dazzling complexities of style."

Some critics objected that Walcott's attention to style sometimes detracted from his poetry, either by being unsuitable for his Caribbean themes or by becoming more important than the poems' content. Denis Donoghue, for example, remarked in the New York Times Book Review, "It is my impression that his standard English style [is] dangerously high for nearly every purpose except that of Jacobean tragedy." In Steve Ratiner's Christian Science Monitor review of Midsummer, the critic observed that "after a time, we are so awash in sparkling language and intricate metaphor, the subject of the poem is all but obscured." New York Review of Books contributor Helen Vendleroks found an "unhappy disjunction between [Walcott's] explosive subject … and his harmonious pentameters, his lyrical allusions, his stately rhymes, [and] his Yeatsian meditations."

More criticism has come from those who thought that the influence of other poets on Walcott's work has drowned out his authentic voice. While Vendler, for instance, described Walcott as a "man of great sensibility and talent," she dismissed much of his poetry as "ventriloquism" and wrote that in Walcott's collection The Fortunate Traveller he seemed "at the mercy of influence, this time the influence of Robert Lowell." Poet J. D. McClatchy also noticed Lowell's influence in The Fortunate Traveller as well as two other Walcott poetry collections: The Star-Apple Kingdom and Midsummer. In his New Republic review, McClatchy not only found similarities in the two men's styles but also a similar pattern of development in their poetry. "Like Lowell," the critic noted, "Walcott's mode has … shifted from the mythological to the historical, from fictions to facts, and his voice has gotten more clipped and severe. There are times when the influence is almost too direct, as in 'Old New England,' [a poem from The Fortunate Traveller] where he paces off Lowell's own territory."

Both major criticisms of Walcott's poetry were answered in Sven Birkerts's New Republic essay. Birkerts observed: "Walcott writes a strongly accented, densely packed line that seldom slackens and yet never loses conversational intimacy. He works in form, but he is not formal. His agitated phonetic surfaces can at times recall Lowell's, but the two are quite different. In Lowell, one feels the torque of mind; in Walcott, the senses predominate. And Walcott's lines ring with a spontaneity that Lowell's often lack."

Other critics defended the integrity of Walcott's poems. Poet James Dickey noted in the New York Times Book Review, "Fortunately, for him and for us … Walcott has the energy and the exuberant strength to break through his literary influences into a highly colored, pulsating realm of his own." In his Poetry review of Midsummer, Paul Breslin wrote: "For the most part,… Walcott's voice remains as distinctive as ever, and the occasional echoes of Lowell register as homage rather than unwitting imitation."

Hamner wrote that when dealing with Walcott's poetry, the term assimilation rather than imitation should be used. The critic observed, "Walcott passed through his youthful apprenticeship phase wherein he consciously traced the models of established masters. He was humble enough to learn from example and honest enough to disclose his intention to appropriate whatever stores he found useful in the canon of world literature….But Walcott does not stop withimitation. Assimilation means to ingest into the mind and thoroughly comprehend; it also means to merge into or become one with a cultural tradition."

In Omeros, whose title is the contemporary Greek word for Homer, Walcott paid homage to the ancient poet in an epic poem that replaced the Homeric Cyclades with the Antilles. Two of the main characters, the West Indian fishermen Achille and Philoctete, set out on a journey to the land of their ancestors on the West African coast. The characters are concerned not with the events of the Trojan War, but rather with the array of civilization, from African antiquity to frontier America and present-day Boston and London. Halfway through the book, the poet himself enters the narrative. Los Angeles Times Book Review critic Nick Owchar noted that "the message of Omeros grows with the poet's entrance." He wrote, "Walcott's philosophical intentions never come closer to being realized than when he turns … criticism on himself. Divestiture, as an artist, is Walcott's forte. He considers his own dangerous use of metaphors: 'When would I not hear the Trojan War / in two fishermen cursing?' he asked near the end. The poet's danger, like every person's, is to distance himself from human suffering by reinterpreting it."

Washington Post Book World reviewer Michael Heyward observed, "Omeros is not a translation or even a recreation of either of Homer's great epics….The ancient work it resembles most … is Ovid's Metamorphoses, with its panoply of characters, its seamless episodic structure, and its panoramic treatment of a mythic world both actual and legendary." He concluded, "We are used to encountering the dynamic exploration of politics and history and folk legend in the contemporary novel, the domain—thanks to Rushdie, Marquez, Gaddis, and others—of modern epic…. Omeros is not a novel and it does not approximate the form of a novel, but it does rival the novel's mastery of a mythic, multidimensional narrative. Strenuous and thrilling, it swims against the tide."

The uniqueness of Walcott's work stems from his ability to interweave British and island influences, to express what McClatchy called "his mixed state" and do so "without indulging in either ethnic chic or imperial drag." His plays offer pictures of the common Caribbean folk and comment on the ills bred by colonialism. His poetry combines native patois and English rhetorical devices in a constant struggle to force an allegiance between the two halves of his split heritage. According to Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Arthur Vogelsang, "These continuing polarities shoot an electricity to each other which is questioning and beautiful and which helps form a vision all together Caribbean and international, personal (him to you, you to him), independent, and essential for readers of contemporary literature on all the continents."

"Only a few poets at any given time are capable of distinctive style, much less a distinctive mature style; and Walcott's mature style, as evolved in Midsummer and further perfected [in The Bounty], is his best," wrote Adam Kirch in a New Republic review of The Bounty, a collection of poems which, once again, showed that Walcott "is urgently concerned with the past and his place in it." Kirch thought that "the subject of History never comes up in Walcott's poetry without a strong note of ambivalence and longing." "Walcott," explained Kirch, "has never tried to escape the fact that the islands are, in the most neutral sense of the term, lacking in History with a glamorous (and ominous) capital 'H'; they lie outside the grand progression of classical and renaissance Europe, their culture and language imported, not to say imposed. What has troubled him, for most of his career, is whether this deprivation is to be mourned or celebrated. For many years he seemed committed to celebration; but he was always too honest to conceal his desire to mourn."

Some of Walcott's perspectives and thoughts are compiled in What the Twilight Says, "an insightful book for those with serious poetic interests," wrote Library Journal reviewer Scott Hightower. A range of writers, "almost exclusively male and lofty" were addressed in the 1998 collection of essays that Walcott first published between the years of 1970 and 1997. This "first prose collection" was praised by a Publishers Weekly critic who commented: "[What the Twilight Says] engages with literature, politics and their intersection….[with writing] so intense that it threatens to disintegrate into lyric." A critic for Publishers Weekly praised "the beaut[iful] … sound" of Walcott's writing. "Reading Derek Walcott can be like listening to some grand cathedral music that's all tangled up in its own echoes: it's lovely, most definitely, but," stated Christian Wiman in a Poetry review of The Bounty, "it can sometimes be tough to tell one note from the next."

Music is not a foreign element to Walcott. Even though the playwright claimed in a 1997 interview with Interview contributor Brendan Lemon that he "hardly listen[s] to [and] … never play[s] music," he interwove his dramatic writing with music in a number of theatrical productions. For example, in his musical, The Capeman, Walcott collaborated with Paul Simon. The Capeman, described Lemon, was "a musical about 1950s Puerto Rican-gang member Salvador Agron." According to Margaret Spillane in Progressive, both creators "wanted Capeman to do what no other Broadway show had done before: consider the fears and terrors and raptures of New York's urban poor at a human scale—not some giant icon of the downtrodden in the manner of Les Miz, and not the outsized exotics of West Side Story. They insisted that their depiction of New York Puerto Rican life would be recognizable to people who actually inhabit New York Puerto Rican lives."

Reviews of the eleven million dollar Capeman, "the most expensive Broadway musical of all times," reported Spillane, were harsh and the show closed quickly. "The criticisms went beyond murmurs about unorthodox rehearsal expenditures," stated Spillane. In Celia Wren's Commonweal review the production was said to contain a "tide of blunders" and its "[musical] score seem[ed] to have been written first, and the drama patched in afterwards [which resulted in calamity]." When summarizing other criticisms, Spillane mentioned "the show didn't offer any monumental characters" and noted that some groups feared that the story "would glorify crime." "Journalists stiffened at the prospect of reckoning with the difficult material of the story," thought Spillane, believing the criticisms to be unfounded and adamantly defending Capeman. Spillane felt that political-like motives were at work when "the New York show biz press corps crushed The Capeman." "Isaw The Capeman twice," wrote Spillane, "and both times I kept swiveling my head in search of what journalists had reported: fidgeting, dissatisfied audience members….ButallI could see was people riveted or rocking, sometimes weeping, usually transfixed. At the curtain calls, people yelled and whooped and stomped out their pleasure."

In Tiepolo's Hound Walcott focuses on the painter Camille Pissarro. Pissarro experienced cultural confusion, similiar to Walcott's, in that Pissarro was a French Sephardic Jew living in the West Indies. Pissarro eventually left the West Indies for Europe to search for himself. It was while abroad that he established himself as one of the fathers of French Impressionism. When Walcott was a young man he learned to paint from "an old master," but he left his painting in order to focus his energies on poetry. Walcott's poem was a "spiritual journey" for him too, according a Yomiuri Shimbun reviewer, who noted Walcott's description of "his constant amazement at the potential and realization of art in poetry, music, and painting. His poem is … a tribute to Pissarro." Walcott combined his love for the islands, poetry, and painting to create the work, and yet his "catalyst" for the entire work was Pissarro and Walcott's interest in French Impressionism. World Literature Today writer Jim Hannan praised Walcott for reaching "most deeply into his and the reader's heart when he reflects on the calm and devastating clarity on his residual doubts, failures, and longings for an art greater than poetry."

The Haitian Trilogy was an ambitious three-part play that Walcott wrote early in his career, and was published in 2002 long after he established himself as a great poet. Library Journal contributor Thomas E. Luddy commented that it came from "a powerful imagination" and that it was "stuffed with historical characters." The plays begin with Columbus's third voyage to the New World and ends in the nineteenth century. Booklist critic Jack Helbig noted that Walcott's "Haitian Earth is more Brechtian in scope" and praised Walcott for his use and understanding of dialect as "remarkable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Baugh, Edward, Derek Walcott: Memory As Vision: Another Life, Longman (London, England), 1978.

Bloom, Harold, Derek Walcott, Chelsea House (New York, NY), 1988.

Brown, Stewart, editor, The Art of Derek Walcott, Dufour (Chester Springs, PA), 1991.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2, 1974, Volume 4, 1975, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 42, 1987, Volume 67, 1992, Volume 76, 1993.

Contemporary Poets, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 117: Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1981, 1982, and 1992, 1993.

Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Culture, Volume 5: African-American Culture, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Goldstraw, Irma, Derek Walcott: An Annotated Bibliography of His Works, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1984.

Hamner, Robert D., compiler and editor, Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott, Three Continents Press (Washington, DC), 1993.

Hamner, Robert D., Derek Walcott, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1981.

Hamner, Robert D., Epic of the Dispossessed: Derek Walcott's "Omeros," University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO), 1997.

Harper, Michael S., and Robert B. Stepto, editors, Chant of Saints, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1979.

Herdeck, Donald E., editor, Three Dynamite Authors: Derek Walcott (Nobel 1992), Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel 1988), Wole Soyinka (Nobel 1986): Ten Biocritical Essays from Their Works As Published by Three Continents Press, Three Continents Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 1995.

King, Bruce Alvin, Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama: Not Only a Playwright but a Company, the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, 1959-1993, Oxford University (New York, NY), 1995.

Olaniyan, Tejumola, Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance: The Invention of Cultural Identities in African, African-American, and Caribbean Drama, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Parker, Michael, and Roger Starkey, editors, Postcolonial Literatures: Achebe, Ngugi, Desai, Walcott, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Rodman, Selden, Tongues of Fallen Angels, New Directions (New York, NY), 1974.

Schomburg Center Guide to Black Literature, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Terada, Rei, Derek Walcott's Poetry: American Mimicry, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 1992.

Thomas, Ned, Derek Walcott, Poet of the Islands, Welsh Arts Council (Cardiff, Wales), 1980.

Walcott, Derek, In a Green Night: Poems, 1948-1960, J. Cape (London, England), 1962.

Walcott, Derek, Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1970.

Walcott, Derek, The Star-Apple Kingdom, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1979.

Walcott, Derek, Collected Poems, 1948-1984, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1986.

Wheatcroft, John, editor, Our Other Voices: Nine Poets Speaking, Bucknell University Press (Lewisberg, VA), 1991.

Wieland, James, The Ensphering Mind: History, Myth, and Fictions in the Poetry of Allen Curnow, Nissim Ezekiel, A. D. Hope, A. M. Klein, Christopher Okigbo, and Derek Walcott, Three Continents Press (Washington, DC), 1988.

periodicals

African American Review, winter, 1999, "Conversations with Derek Walcott," p. 708.

American Poetry Review, May-June, 1978.

American Theatre, May-June, 1993, Patti Hartigan, "The Passions of Derek Walcott," p. 14.

Architectural Digest, January, 1997.

Art Journal, spring, 2001, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 107.

Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 23, 1995.

Black Issues Book Review, May, 2001, Gregory A. Pardlo, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 34.

Booklist, April 15, 1997; December 1, 2001, Jack Helbig, review of The Haitian Trilogy, p. 625; August, 2002, Jack Helbig, review of Walker and Ghost Dance, p. 1912.

Books and Bookmen, April, 1972.

Book World, December 13, 1970; January 3, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 13.

Boston Globe, January 20, 1996; October 16, 1996; October 12, 1997; November 16, 1997.

Callaloo, spring, 1999, review of Omeros, p. 509; winter, 2001, review of Omeros, p. 276.

Caribbean Writer, Volume 13, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 234.

Chicago Tribune Book World, May 2, 1982; September 9, 1984; March 9, 1986.

Choice, March, 1995.

Christian Science Monitor, March 19, 1982; April 6, 1984.

Chronicle of Higher Education, April 19, 1996, p. A23.

Classical World, September, 1999, reviews of Omeros, p. 7, and The Odyssey: A Stage Version, p. 71.

Commonweal, April 10, 1998, review of Capeman.

Contemporary Literature, summer, 1979; winter, 1994, Graham Huggan, "A Tale of Two Parrots: Walcott, Rhys, and the Uses of Colonial Mimicry," p. 643.

Detroit Free Press, October 9, 1992.

Economist, September 6, 1997, review of The Bounty.

English Journal, March, 1994, p. 94.

Entertainment Weekly, February 13, 1998.

Georgia Review, summer, 1984.

Hudson Review, summer, 1984.

Interview, December, 1997, author interview.

Journal of Commonwealth Literature, December, 1976; August, 1981; August, 1986.

Library Journal, November 1, 1994, p. 127; June 1, 1996; April 15, 1997, review of The Bounty; October 15, 1998; May 15, 2000, Graham Christian, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 98; November 1, 2001, review of The Haitian Trilogy, p. 117; January, 2002, Thomas E. Luddy, review of The Haitian Trilogy, p. 105; July, 2002, Thomas E. Luddy, review of Walker and the Ghost Dance, p. 81.

Literary Review, spring, 1986.

London Magazine, December, 1973-January, 1974; February-March, 1977.

Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1986.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 4, 1982; May 21, 1985; April 6, 1986; October 26, 1986; September 6, 1987; January 20, 1991; October 20, 1996.

Nation, February 12, 1977; May 19, 1979; February 27, 1982.

National Review, November 3, 1970; June 20, 1986, James W. Tuttleton, review of Collected Poems: 1948-1984, p. 51.

New Criterion, March, 1998, Mark Steyn, review of Capeman, p. 38.

New Leader, March 11, 1991, Phoebde Pettingell, review of Omeros, p. 15; January 13, 1997, review of Homage to Robert Frost; September 8, 1997, review of The Bounty.

New Republic, November 20, 1976; March 17, 1982; January 23, 1984; March 24, 1986, J. D. McClatchy, review of Collected Poems, p. 36; October 29, 1990, Christopher Benfey, review of Omeros, p. 36; December 28, 1992; December 15, 1997, review of The Bounty; March 30, 1998, review of Capeman.

New Statesman, March 19, 1982; August 15, 1997, review of The Bounty.

New Statesman & Society, October, 16, 1992; July 21, 1995.

Newsweek, October 19, 1992.

New York, August 14, 1972; February 16, 1998.

New Yorker, March 27, 1971; June 26, 1971; December 12, 1992; February 9, 1998.

New York Review of Books, December 31, 1964; May 6, 1971; June 13, 1974; October 14, 1976; May 31, 1979; March 4, 1982; November 10, 1983; March 27, 1997.

New York Times, March 21, 1979; August 21, 1979; May 30, 1981; May 2, 1982; January 15, 1986; December 17, 1986; October 9, 1992; June 1, 1995; November 13, 1997.

New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1964; October 11, 1970; May 6, 1973; October 31, 1976; May 13, 1979; January 3, 1982; April 8, 1984; February 2, 1986; December 20, 1987; October 7, 1990; October 6, 1996; June 29, 1997.

New York Times Magazine, May 23, 1982; November 9, 1997.

Observer (London, England), October 11, 1992; February 14, 1999.

Paris Review, winter, 1986.

Poetry, February, 1972; December, 1973; July, 1977; December, 1984; June, 1986; August, 1998; August, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 286; April, 2001, Paul Breslin, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 38.

Progressive, June, 1998, review of Capeman.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 1996, review of Homage to Robert Frost; May 26, 1997, review of The Bounty; August 31, 1998; February 7, 2000, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 69.

Research in African Literature, summer, 1994, Patrick Hogan, review of Dream on Monkey Mountain, p. 103; spring, 2003, Edward Baugh, "Derek Walcott and the Centering of the Caribbean Subject," p. 151.

Review, winter, 1974.

Sewanee Review, January, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. R25.

South Carolina Review, fall, 1999, review of Omeros, p. 142.

Spectator (London, England), May 10, 1980.

Third World Quarterly, October, 1988.

Time, March 15, 1982; October 11, 1992; October 31, 1994, p. 78; July 14, 1997, Pico Iyer, review of The Bounty, p. 85; January 19, 1998; April 3, 2000, Paul Gray, "Islands in the Stream: Poet Derek Walcott Spins a Luminous Meditation on Visual Art," p. 81.

Times Literary Supplement, December 25, 1969; August 3, 1973; July 23, 1976; August 8, 1980; September 8, 1980; September 24, 1982; November 9, 1984; October 24, 1986; October 1, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 25.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), November 8, 1987.

TriQuarterly, winter, 1986.

Twentieth-Century Literature, summer, 2001, Charles W. Pollard, "Traveling with Joyce: Derek Walcott's Discrepant Cosmopolitan Modernism," p. 197; fall, 2001, Robert D. Hamner, review of The Odyssey: A Stage Version, p. 374.

Village Voice, April 11, 1974.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1974; summer, 1984; summer, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 84.

Vogue, January, 1998.

Wall Street Journal, October 9, 1992.

Washington Post Book World, February 21, 1982; April 13, 1986; November 11, 1990; April 26, 1995.

Western Humanities Review, spring, 1977.

World Literature Today, spring, 1977; summer, 1979; summer, 1981; winter, 1985; summer, 1986; winter, 1987; winter, 1989; winter, 1997; winter, 1998, review of The Bounty, p. 191; spring, 1999, review of What the Twilight Says, p. 339; autumn, 2000, Jim Hannan, review of Tiepolo's Hound, p. 797.

World Literature Written in English, April, 1973; April, 1977; November, 1977; spring, 1986; spring, 1987.

Yale Review, October, 1973.

Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri, August 22, 2000, "Walcott Turns an Artistic Eye to Colonialism in Epic Poem," p. YOSH 12474972.