A collection spanning the whole of Derek Walcott's celebrated, inimitable, essential career"He gives us more than himself or ‘a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language." Alongside Joseph Brodsky's words of praise one might mention the more concrete honors that the renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry; the Nobel Prize in Literature.The Poetry of Derek Walcot...

'He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language.' Alongside Joseph Brodsky's words of praise one might mention the more concrete honours that the renowned poet Derek Walcott has received: a MacArthur Fellowship; the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry; the Nobel Prize in Literature.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 M...

The poems in this sequence of fifty-four were written to encompass one year, from summer to summer. Their principal themes are the stasis, both stultifying and provocative, of midsummer in the tropics; the pull of the sea, family, and friendship on one whose cricumstances lead to separation; the relationship of poetry to painting; and the place of a poet between two cultures.Walcott records, with his distinctive linguistic blend of soaring imagery and plainly stated facts, the exper...

Most of the poems in this sequence of fifty where written in close succession during one summer in Trinidad. Their principle themes are the relationship of poetry to painting, the stasis of midsummer in the tropics, and the pull of the sea, family and friendship. Walcott records the experience of middle life - in reality and in memory or the imagination. On the publication of Derek Walcott's previous collection, The Fortunate Traveller, Blake Morrison wrote in the London Revie...

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora.Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across...

Derek Walcott's eighth collection of poems, The Arkansas Testament, is divided into two parts--"Here," verse evoking the poet's native Caribbean, and "Elsewhere." It opens with six poems in quatrains whose memorable, compact lines further Walcott's continuous effort to crystallize images of the Caribbean landscape and people.For several years, Derek Walcott has lived mainly in the United States. "The Arkansas Testament," one of the book's long poems, is a powerful confronta...

Derek Walcott was aptly described by Laurence Liberman in The Yale Review as "one of the handful of brilliant historic mythologists of our day." Sea Grapes deepens with this major poet's search for true images of the post-Adamic "new world"--especially those of his native Caribbean culture. Walcott's rich and vital naming of the forms of island life is complemented by poems set in America and England, by inward-turning meditations, and by invocations of other poets--Osip ...

Two masterful artists—Gauguin and van Gogh—come alive in a vibrant drama about friendship, art, and madnessTwo painters—Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh—are living together in the sleepy town of Arles in 1888. Soon, Gauguin, frustrated by van Gogh's refusal to acknowledge his increasingly troubled mind, will depart for Paris. In two years, van Gogh will be dead by his own hand. In the meantime, the friends discuss their craft; they frequent a local café that van G...

In his longest and most ambitious poem, Derek Walcott reaches beyond an evocative portrayl of his native West Indies to create a moving elegy on himself and on man.The fascinating and complex matrix of the author's life is illuminated with our candor, verve, and strength. Over four thousand lines of verse are grouped into four parts. He evokes scenes of his divided childhood, in which children live in shacks while fine khaki-clothed Englishmen drink tea. He depicts the influence of ...

Three plays by the Nobel-laureate Derek Walcott, brought together for the first time in The Haitian TrilogyIn the history plays that comprise The Haitian Trilogy-- Henri Christophe, Drums and Colours and The Haytian Earth--Derek Walcott, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, uses verse to tell the story of his native West Indies as a four-hundred-year cycle of war, conquest and r...

From the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, a book-length poem on two educations in painting, a century apart"Between me and Venice the thigh of a hound;my awe of the ordinary, because even as I write,paused on a step of this couplet, I have never foundits image again, a hound in astounding light."Tiepolo's Hound joins the quests of two Caribbean men: Camille Pissarro--a Sephardic Jew born in 1830 ...

First produced by Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in 1979, Remembrance is the story of an evasively eloquent retired teacher who cannot reconcile his anachronistic love of British culture with the evolution of his family and community in independent Trinidad. "A lyrical, audience-pleasing work" ( Variety). Mr. Walcott is a poet, and his writing is of a quality we seldom hear in the theatre" ( The New Yorker).Pantomime is a fast-paced c...