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Loading... White Egrets: Poems (edition 2010)by Derek Walcott
1   parrishlantern | Jun 29, 2012 | 
Latin name -Ardea alba Family - Bitterns and herons(Ardeidae) The Great White Egret, is almost identical to little Egrets, but obviously they are much larger – around the same size as a Grey Heron. The identification features to be aware of are, black feet as opposed to yellow, and a yellow beak (in juvenile and non-breeding plumage), they also use a different fishing technique like that of the grey heron, living off fish, insects and frogs, caught by spearing with its long, sharp beak. White Egrets is also the title of the Fourteenth collection of poetry from Derek Walcott. Born in St Lucia in 1930, he studied at the University College of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica). Walcott published his first poem at 14 and by 19 had self-published his two first collections - 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949) which he distributed himself. But it was his collection - In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962) exploring the Caribbean and it’s history in a colonialist and post-colonialist context that saw him gain an international public profile. He has since published eight collections of plays, a collection of essays, as well as his volumes of poetry, including an epic poem (Omeros), in which he invokes the spirit and people of his homeland through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In 1992 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he is also an honorary member of the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters. This his latest collection won this years T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the chair for this years prize was Anne Stevenson & she said that "the judges felt that Derek Walcott's White Egrets was a moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet." In this collection of poetry, “Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects – the Caribbean’s complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucía, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccommodating sublime of the new world, times cunning passages, the poets place in all of this – with a passionate intensity and drive that rivals his greatest work” . Yet reading these poems you soon realise another figure stalks the landscape, that with the passing of time, there’s loss, there’s death, whether this is of friends, or the death of love, or just unrequited love, stillborn with regret. In these beautiful poems you get visions of a man looking back on his life, looking back with regret, with humour, but looking back from the perspective that this may be his last call, but this is a not a legacy, there is too much passion for that. http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/white-egrets-by-derek-walcott.html (  )1 parrishlantern | Jun 29, 2012 | A significant departure for Walcott. This mature, reflective work examines his past and the colonial history of the Caribbean in rhymed verse. This is elegiac, thoughtful, philosophical poetry. A work for the ages. ( ) Fledgist | Aug 17, 2011 | This superb collection of poetry by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry last year. It describes a man heading toward the end of his life, filled with the life and death of others, past and relatively current events such as 9/11, the election of Barack Obama, postcolonialism and post-postcolonialism in Africa, India, and the Caribbean, and post-Franco Spain, with frequent references to nature and his travels around the world. One especially touching poem is "Sixty Years After": In my wheelchair in the Virgin lounge at Vieuxfort I saw, sitting in her own wheelchair, her beauty hunched like a crumpled flower, the one whom I thought as the fire of my young life would do her duty to be golden and beautiful and young forever even as I aged. She was treble-chinned, old, her devastating smile was netted in wrinkles, but I felt the fever briefly returning as we sat there, crippled, hating time and the lie of general pleasantries. Small waves still break against the small stone pier where a boatman left me in the orange peace of dusk, a half-century ago, maybe happier being erect, she like a deer in her shyness, I stalking an impossible consummation; those who knew us knew we would never be together, at least not walking. Now the silent knives from the intercom went through us. (  )2 kidzdoc | Jul 15, 2011 | White Egrets by Derek Walcott is a collection of deeply suggestive and blatant poems about the natural cycle of birth, life, and death and coming to terms with the later as friends, lovers, and others pass away leaving the narrator behind on the journey of life. Each poem uses nature imagery to paint a canvas of emotion as the narrator grapples with grief, joy, and memory. Walcott’s poems are long and narrative in many cases, which is not a form or style that calls to every reader, but even the most picky reader can easily pick out the cues that will carry them throughout the multiple part poems. Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2011/04/white-egrets-by-derek-walcott.html ( )1 sagustocox | Apr 17, 2011 | I pick up Derek Walcott’s latest at the library, partly because it’s Walcott, partly because of the title, White Egrets, partly I suppose because of the dignity and bravado of its dj, bold white against gray, partly because of the poems on the pages, their form, the white space, their calm, prosaic first lines: I watch the huge trees tossing at the edge of the lawn . . . These birds keep modeling for Audubon . . . . The perpetual ideal is astonishment . . . . I hadn’t seen them for half the Christmas week . . . . With the leisure of a leaf falling in the forest . . . . We were by the pool of a friend’s house in St. Croix . . . . partly (mostly) because something in me said, You shall. What I heard the poet say – he spoke of his young love lost (oh, yes, that too), of chess pieces and terra cotta statues, of snowy egrets (over and over again), of empire lost, of “old Europe” – what I heard him say – after all, he is aging as I am aging, but famous, handsome, versatile, a genius, a sexual athlete (or so scandal would have it), but even so, aging as I am aging – what I heard him say to me, after all is said and done, no more operas, no more museums, no more icons, what I heard him say, near the end (in #51 of 54), but really from the beginning, and everywhere in between, what I heard him whisper with the force of a bellow, was So much to do still, all of it praise. So much, so little time, so much to do, all of it praise. Reviewer's note: this was written in a form loosely imitative of Walcott's poetic form (and as a tribute to him). Regrettably the formatting of LibraryThing reviews may disguise this form and make my lines difficult to discern or to understand. Sorry about that. 2 bfrank | Jul 3, 2010 | |
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Family - Bitterns and herons(Ardeidae)
The Great White Egret, is almost identical to little Egrets, but obviously they are much larger – around the same size as a Grey Heron. The identification features to be aware of are, black feet as opposed to yellow, and a yellow beak (in juvenile and non-breeding plumage), they also use a different fishing technique like that of the grey heron, living off fish, insects and frogs, caught by spearing with its long, sharp beak.
White Egrets is also the title of the Fourteenth collection of poetry from Derek Walcott. Born in St Lucia in 1930, he studied at the University College of the West Indies (Kingston, Jamaica). Walcott published his first poem at 14 and by 19 had self-published his two first collections - 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949) which he distributed himself. But it was his collection - In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962) exploring the Caribbean and it’s history in a colonialist and post-colonialist context that saw him gain an international public profile. He has since published eight collections of plays, a collection of essays, as well as his volumes of poetry, including an epic poem (Omeros), in which he invokes the spirit and people of his homeland through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. In 1992 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he is also an honorary member of the American Academy and the Institute of Arts and Letters.
This his latest collection won this years T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the chair for this years prize was Anne Stevenson & she said that
"the judges felt that Derek Walcott's White Egrets was a moving, risk-taking and technically flawless book by a great poet."
In this collection of poetry, “Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects – the Caribbean’s complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucía, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccommodating sublime of the new world, times cunning passages, the poets place in all of this – with a passionate intensity and drive that rivals his greatest work” .
Yet reading these poems you soon realise another figure stalks the landscape, that with the passing of time, there’s loss, there’s death, whether this is of friends, or the death of love, or just unrequited love, stillborn with regret. In these beautiful poems you get visions of a man looking back on his life, looking back with regret, with humour, but looking back from the perspective that this may be his last call, but this is a not a legacy, there is too much passion for that.
http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/white-egrets-by-derek-walcott.html (