Derek Walcott Flashcards
Where was Walcott born?
St. Lucia, West Indies (former British colony)
For what work did Walcott win the Nobel Prize?
Omeros (1992); a Caribbean re-imagining of the Odyssey.
How old was Walcott when White Egrets was published?
80
To what Quals author does Walcott dedicate a poem in this collection?
August Wilson, (Untitled #6). Wilson died in 2005; in this poem Walcott describes the moon as a bugle that reminds him of the playwright.
“Your sweet instrument is put away as your silver cornet lies in its velvet case, with all those riffs and arias whose characters argue the way that wind elates the acacias.”
Discuss your theory about the poem’s titles.
Almost all of the poems in this work are untitled, but listed with numbers. This numbering technique corresponds with the poems’ focus on aging and mortality, counting up until the final poem, which ends:
“A cloud slowly covers the page and it goes / white again and the book comes to a close.”
The lack of titles could also be read as an embodiment of aging perspective: the past blends together - memories are not necessarily as important individually, but for how they fit collectively into the whole of a life or work.
To whom does Walcott compare white egrets in the poem of the same name?
Primarily himself, but also other aging friends/artists. He draws parallels between his white hair and their white feathers, as well as : “We share one instinct, that ravenous feeding / my pen’s beak, plucking up wriggling insects / like nouns and gulping them.”
Discuss “The Spectre of Empire.”
- Of the poems in “White Egrets,” this one may be most closely associated with the themes for which Walcott is typically known - colonialism and Caribbean identity.
- Incorporates literary resonances (Conrad, 19th c. novel, etc.)
- Imagines Empire’s legacy as a literal ghost in St. Lucia.
- “The things he cherishes now are things that bore him, and how powerlessness contains such power. The costumes that he wore, and the roles that wore him.”
Which two poems in this collection address Walcott’s well-known themes of Empire and colonialism?
“The Lost Empire” and “The Spectre of Empire”; both ruminate on the legacy of Empire as its power as drastically decreased in the West Indies.
Discuss Obama’s presence in this collection.
44 takes a different approach, addressing instead the hope that Obama has inspired in others, especially a black community that witnessed so many atrocities in the 1960s. It takes place in a barber shop, a traditionally racial space. The feeling Obama’s election imparts is “like an election promise that is kept.” (44 is the number president of the U.S.A. that Obama was)
There are two poems that reference Obama directly, “Forty Acres” and #44.
“Forty Acres,” referring to the unkept promise of “Forty Acres and a Mule” for former slaves after the Civil War. Walcott imagines Obama as a ploughman whose field is the America which has elected him president. He doesn’t forget the legacy of slavery in his success.
