Derek Walcott (1930–2017)

I read this when it came out, and was startled by its ductile grandeur and directness. I aloudread it to various students, in classes, and in large gatherings, for several years. It is simply the best re-working of the Odyssey since Joyce's Ulysses. And of course, Walcott has the daring of poetry; Joyce collapsed into prose.
A decade ago I had maybe fifty lines by heart, in short passages, simply because I had aloudread it enough to remember them. The only one that stays with me in my show more decline is the one a tried--and failed--to say to the author when he was signing books at a community college convention in Portsmouth, NH (I think). Waiting in a long line, I brought my copy from home to him, and tried to say the very last line, "The moon shone like a slice of raw onion." But my voice failed me, only the second time in my life: the first was in third grade, in a Christmas pageant, where I had trouble reading the Luke story in front of an audience.
By the way, Walcott's multi-linguality does not really come through in the poem, and maybe it shouldn't; but here is a man for whom English may be the second or third language he learned as a child, after Creole and perhaps French. I think he may have read some Homer in Greek as well. show less

5. Omeros by Derek Walcott
published: 1990
format: 325 page Paperback
acquired: December
read: Jan 1-5, restarted Jan 8-18
rating: 5

From about 1667 to 1814, as the British and French fought for supremacy in the Caribbean and elsewhere, the strategically important island of St. Lucia was fought over numerous times and changed hands fourteen times. It became know as the "Helen of the West Indies". This is Walcott's pick-up point for his masterpiece.

It is, in its simplest sense, a story of the show more island of St. Lucia, one that brings in its history of conquest, extermination and slavery, and apparently the author's personal history, along with some selected context from around the world, and that focuses on the economic classes on the island, especially on the poverty. Walcott, in a magical touch, Homerizes everything. The poor islanders are given Homeric names, Achille, Hector, Philoctete, Helen and, of course, Omeros, who is blind. (Omeros is the phonetically correct spelling of the ancient Greek Author, Όμηρος.) Virgil's Sybil becomes Ma Kilman. The Englishman is named Denis Plunkett, and his Irish wife is Maud. The narrator never tells us his name, or that of his lost girlfriend he seeks to find or overcome, while neglecting his wife and children. Dante and Joyce leave their own traces, although I haven't read them couldn't appreciate this much.

Achille (pronounced A-sheel) and Hector do come to battle over Helen, Philoctete struggles with an infected and unhealing wound on his leg, and blind Omeros sees a great deal. And there is a vast finicky ocean to get lost in.

I've been shy to review this because I am not able to capture the impact of its language. The story is originally just context, an excuse for the expression Walcott makes of it. And it's astounding, even more so if you can apply Walcott's own voice, with its St. Lucian/Caribbean lilt. It's something to live in for a bit.

I found that I was ok following, and then about halfway through I was completely lost. (Achille is passed out on a boat, and winds his way to a river and then he's walking back across the ocean floor. I couldn't quite workout that he had gone backwards in time, to an African village along the banks of a large African river, even if I could get the generally hallucinatory feel.) So, I started using Shmoop, and then, as Walcott the narrator travels through the western major cities, bumping into James Joyce and whatnot, unnamed of course, I became completely dependent. I would read the Shmoop summary of a chapter first to get the story, then read the chapter itself for the language. Certainly a hackneyed way to read this. But it got me through with a degree of appreciation. If I was left with a sense it evolved for a time into something a little plot heavy, that probably says more about my reading style than the contents.

The overall impact for me was the sense of presence Walcott creates. Everything has a spiritual impact, or lives, in this language, in direct counter to that. Poverty, accidents, tourism, development all live as tragic counters to weakening divine spirits of these decedents of slavery. Parallels are brought in, heavily, with the extermination of the North American Indians, especially the well documented massacre at Wounded Knee, in 1890, in the midst of the ghost dance. Walcott, in interviews, says that he is angry. But his poem is not exactly, or not simply that. It's both more circumspect and, on the surface at least, pledging some variation of hope.

2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/279863#6353501 show less

The Nobel Prize was awarded for this Homeric poem -- and the announcement was the discovery of gold in the Caribbean archipelago! "Omeros" is the title of this long and interconnected poem -- broken out in easily-read Danteian terza rima (for the most part). The title is from the way a beautiful woman pronounced the protagonist fisherman's name -- "Homer". And the "Om" invokes the revenant spirit of the conch, "mer" is a word for mother, and "os" is a word for bone. Just sayin'....

There are show more many--and I am one--who avoid long poems, or "poetry" of pointless tale-telling and irritating similes that avoid telling a good tale. Walcott provides a robust tale--this is an Odessian romp through the tree-falls and archipelago of the Caribbean. And it is filled with jewels, and joys and pains. Irony is the salvation in the struggle with colonials and slaves, all of whom are struggling with consciousness. Homer himself takes a turn in narrating this semi-autobiographical unveiling of a wounded Achilles. There are many allusions to historical events--the islands passed from one colonial power to another after various battles. There are many echoes and nods to mythology--the role of a beauty among tribes haunted by sex. But this is not knotted obscurity like trying to read a Pound-ed cant Canto. This poetry is vivid and accessible -- filled with moist surprises, just like a jungle. You don't have to read, or long for, footnotes to "explain" the meaning.

I laughed and wept, and felt enriched. And relieved that I was able to sail off with treasure and without the burden of having had to pillage the smoking village and slaughter any stinking pirates and naval pretenders. show less

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 show more 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. show less