Bloom’s Modern Critical Views African American Poets: WheatleyTolson African American Poets: Hayden-Dove Edward Albee American and Canadian Women Poets, 1930–present American Women Poets, 1650–1950 Maya Angelou Asian-American Writers Margaret Atwood Jane Austen James Baldwin Honoré de Balzac Samuel Beckett Saul Bellow The Bible William Blake Jorge Luis Borges Ray Bradbury The Brontës Gwendolyn Brooks Elizabeth Barrett Browning Robert Browning Italo Calvino Albert Camus Truman Capote Lewis Carroll Willa Cather Cervantes Geoffrey Chaucer Anton Chekhov Kate Chopin Agatha Christie Samuel Taylor Coleridge Joseph Conrad Contemporary Poets Stephen Crane Dante Daniel Defoe Don DeLillo Charles Dickens Emily Dickinson John Donne and the 17th-Century Poets Fyodor Dostoevsky W.E.B DuBois George Eliot T S Eliot Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Emerson William Faulkner F Scott Fitzgerald Sigmund Freud Robert Frost Johann Wolfgang von Goethe George Gordon, Lord Byron Graham Greene Thomas Hardy Nathaniel Hawthorne Ernest Hemingway Hermann Hesse Hispanic-American Writers Homer Langston Hughes Zora Neale Hurston Aldous Huxley Henrik Ibsen John Irving Henry James James Joyce Franz Kafka John Keats Jamaica Kincaid Stephen King Rudyard Kipling Milan Kundera D H Lawrence Doris Lessing Ursula K Le Guin Sinclair Lewis Norman Mailer Bernard Malamud Christopher Marlowe Gabriel García Márquez Cormac McCarthy Carson McCullers Herman Melville Arthur Miller John Milton Molière Toni Morrison Native-American Writers Joyce Carol Oates Flannery O’Connor Eugene O’Neill George Orwell Octavio Paz Sylvia Plath Edgar Allan Poe Katherine Anne Porter Thomas Pynchon Philip Roth Salman Rushdie J D Salinger Jean-Paul Sartre William Shakespeare: Histories and Poems William Shakespeare: Romances William Shakespeare: The Comedies William Shakespeare: The Tragedies George Bernard Shaw Bloom’s Modern Critical Views Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley Alexander Solzhenitsyn Sophocles John Steinbeck Tom Stoppard Jonathan Swift Amy Tan Alfred, Lord Tennyson Henry David Thoreau J R R Tolkien Leo Tolstoy Ivan Turgenev Mark Twain John Updike Kurt Vonnegut Derek Walcott Alice Walker Robert Penn Warren Eudora Welty Edith Wharton Walt Whitman Oscar Wilde Tennessee Williams Thomas Wolfe Tom Wolfe Virginia Woolf William Wordsworth Richard Wright William Butler Yeats Bloom’s Modern Critical Views DEREK WALCOTT Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University ©2003 by Chelsea House Publishers, a subsidiary of Haights Cross Communications Introduction © 2003 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher Printed and bound in the United States of America 10 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Derek Walcott / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom p cm (Bloom’s modern critical views) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN: 0-7910-7395-5 Walcott, Derek Criticism and interpretation West Indies In literature I Bloom, Harold II Series PR9272.9.W3 Z65 2002 811'.54 dc21 2002151622 Chelsea House Publishers 1974 Sproul Road, Suite 400 Broomall, PA 19008-0914 http://www.chelseahouse.com Contributing Editor: Jesse Zuba Cover designed by Terry Mallon Cover photo © Reuters NewMedia Inc./CORBIS Layout by EJB Publishing Services Contents Editor’s Note vii Introduction Harold Bloom The Murmur of Malvern Seamus Heaney Derek Walcott, Contemporary Calvin Bedient Poet of Two Worlds Helen Vendler 11 25 The Sound of the Tide Joseph Brodsky 35 The Poetry of Derek Walcott Peter Balakian “Either I’m Nobody, or I’m a Nation” Rita Dove 43 53 The Apprentice: 25 Poems, Epitaph for the Young, Poems, and In a Green Night 79 Stewart Brown Derek Walcott and Alejo Carpentier: Nature, History, and the Caribbean Writer David Mikics “With No Homeric Shadow”: The Disavowal of Epic in Derek Walcott’s Omeros 135 Gregson Davis 101 vi CONTENTS “The Theatre of Our Lives”: Founding an Epic Drama Paula Burnett 149 The Wound of Postcolonial History: Derek Walcott’s Omeros 175 Jahan Ramazani Another Life: West Indian Experience and the Problems of Narration Paul Breslin Derek Walcott: The Sigh of History Wes Davis Chronology 275 Contributors 279 Bibliography 283 Acknowledgments Index 289 287 205 241 Editor’s Note My Introduction centers upon Derek Walcott’s recent long poem, Tiepolo’s Hound, which I read as a parable of Walcott’s problematic relation to poetic tradition The Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, renders a gracious tribute to Walcott’s volume, The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979), particularly commending the long poem, “The Schooner Flight,” while Calvin Bedient assays a somewhat lower place to The Fortunate Travellers (1981) Helen Vendler, in the essay reprinted here with which I am most in agreement, shows how vulnerable Walcott is to the influence of stronger precursors: W B Yeats, Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas, Pound, Eliot, and Auden Joseph Brodsky however praises Walcott’s poetry as “Adamic,” and insists he is neither a traditionalist nor a modernist In a very generous overview, Peter Balakian finds in Walcott an eminence akin to such poets as Yeats, Rilke, and Neruda, after which Rita Dove praises Walcott’s “wise artistry.” Stewart Brown usefully examines Walcott’s apprentice verse, and emerges unbothered by Walcott’s eclecticism in absorbing such contemporaries as Robert Lowell and Brodsky, even in much later work We move to Walcott’s plays with David Mikics, who in a very adroit essay, exploits the Magical Realism he feels allies Walcott to the great Cuban novelist, Alejo Carpentier Omeros, Walcott’s epic, is lauded by Gregson Davis for not being shadowed by Homer, after which Paula Burnett returns us to Walcott’s dramas, which she sees as being comparable to the best of Brecht In an excellent essay, Jahan Ramazani considers Omeros as the exemplar vii of an authentic “postcolonial poetics of affliction,” while Paul Breslin centers upon Another Life, a poetic autobiography which he judges to be a narrative experiment of considerable power In this volume’s final essay, Wes Davis attempts to contextualize Walcott in the nuances of West Indian History Introduction A fter reading each of Derek Walcott’s books as they have appeared, I remain uncertain as to the question of his aesthetic eminence, though few seem to share my inability to render any verdict, even for myself Walcott is an excellent narrator, and is blessed with many verbal gifts My own bafflement ensues from a concern with poetic voice that centers my own love for reading and appreciating poetry Has Derek Walcott developed a voice altogether his own, the mark of a major poet, or does one hear in him the composite voice of post-Yeatsian poetry in English? I want to see if my recent reading of Walcott’s long poem, Tiepolo’s Hound, will resolve my doubts The strategy of Tiepolo’s Hound turns upon a brilliant doubling of Walcott and the West Indian Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, born in 1830, exactly a century before Walcott In Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew and so a fellow exile and outsider, Walcott discovers an aesthetic quest he regards as being profoundly akin to his own The poem’s final section, XXVI, opens with a poignant identity forged between Pissarro and Walcott: He enters the window frame His gaze is yours Primed canvas, steaming mirror, this white page where a drawing emerges His portrait sighs from a white fog Pissarro in old age, as we stand doubled in each other’s eyes To endure affliction with no affection gone seems to have been the settlement in those eyes, ... Cataloging-in-Publication Data Derek Walcott / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom p cm (Bloom s modern critical views) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN: 0-7910-7395-5 Walcott, Derek Criticism... William Wordsworth Richard Wright William Butler Yeats Bloom s Modern Critical Views DEREK WALCOTT Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University... Introduction Harold Bloom The Murmur of Malvern Seamus Heaney Derek Walcott, Contemporary Calvin Bedient Poet of Two Worlds Helen Vendler 11 25 The Sound of the Tide Joseph Brodsky 35 The Poetry of Derek