the white moon’s filaments wane

March 17, 2017 10:54 AM

Derek Walcott, Poet and Nobel Laureate of the Caribbean, Dies at 87

He said that his work could be summarised on a postcard: “Wish you were here.” The poignant current of nostalgia that runs through his verse reflects his belief that Caribbean poetry is “very happy when it’s very sad”. Good Caribbean writing, he believed, has a strong sense of tragicomedy and a brave attitude. It does not despair easily. He described the region as a place of “unfinished associations”, bearing the amnesia that followed indenture and slavery. It is also “the territory of metaphor”, a fertile imaginative terrain, and Walcott’s work is accordingly full of symbolism, myth and folklore.

Derek Walcott obituary, The Guardian

The Poetry Foundation's obituary, with a comprehensive bibliography of Walcott's work.

posted by standardasparagus (17 comments total)

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posted by Kattullus at 10:57 AM on March 17, 2017

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posted by snofoam at 11:09 AM on March 17, 2017

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posted by the sobsister at 11:09 AM on March 17, 2017

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posted by pernoctalian at 11:20 AM on March 17, 2017

The Guardian obit kind of glosses over charges of sexual harassment brought against Walcott. There is some good conversation on author Rebecca Makkai's (public) Facebook page.

This aspect of Walcott's live resonated with me because I witnessed the same sort of behavior as an undergrad in a Creative Writing programme in the early 1990's. The same sort of behavior still continues, with the same excuses being made.
posted by My Dad at 11:25 AM on March 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

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posted by clew at 12:02 PM on March 17, 2017

Oh, man. I bought a detailed map of St. Lucia so I could follow Omeros more closely. What a hell of a poet he was.

I sang our wide country, the Caribbean Sea. [...]

but now the idyll dies, the goblet is broken,
and rainwater trickles down the brown cheek of a jar
from the clay of Choiseul. So much left unspoken

by my chirping nib!

posted by languagehat at 12:17 PM on March 17, 2017 [5 favorites]

John Drabinski also posted an elegant and moving obituary.

Here, Drabinski quotes Walcott's final paragraph of The Muse of History in full:

I accept this archipelago of the Americas. I say to the ancestor who sold me, and to the ancestor who bought me, I have no father, I want no such father, although I can understand you, black ghost, white ghost, when you both whisper “history,” for if I attempt to forgive you both I am falling into your idea of history which justifies and explains and expiates, and it is not mine to forgive, my memory cannot summon any filial love, since your features are anonymous and erased and I have no wish and no power to pardon. You were when you acted your roles, your given, historical roles of slave seller and slave buyer, men acting as men, and also you, father in the filth-ridden gut of the slave ship, to you they were also men, acting as men, with the cruelty of men, your fellowman and tribesman not moved or hovering with hesitation about your common race any longer than my other bastard ancestor hovered with his whip, but to you, inwardly forgiven grandfathers, I, like the more honest of my race, give a strange thanks. I give the strange and bitter and yet enobling thanks for the monumental groaning and soldering of two great worlds, like the halves of a fruit seamed by its own bitter juice, that exiled from your own Edens you have placed me in that wonder of another, and that was my inheritance and our gift.

posted by standardasparagus at 12:29 PM on March 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Walcott wasn't just charged with sexual harassment, he admitted to sexual harassment (lowering the grade of a student in his class after she refused to sleep with him). A comment by Jess Row on Rebecca Makkai's Facebook page:

It's a huge issue; I'm sure it's on many people's minds today, and it cuts to the heart of why this issue is so difficult. When you have someone who's literally the most recognized poet on the continent, a Nobel Prize winner, etc, who also has a longstanding history of manipulation and harassment, etc—what can you do? How should this person, who can't be erased or forgotten or dismissed, be remembered?

How about: he's remembered as a gifted poet who used his power to pressure women to sleep with him, and retaliated against them if they turned him down.
posted by medusa at 12:49 PM on March 17, 2017 [12 favorites]

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posted by Sphinx at 1:41 PM on March 17, 2017

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posted by Cash4Lead at 2:10 PM on March 17, 2017

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posted by From Bklyn at 2:37 PM on March 17, 2017

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posted by doctornemo at 2:54 PM on March 17, 2017

Not to forget the Walcott / Naipaul feud
when Walcott launched an attack in verse.
Anni Paul was present and wrote about that first reading of The Mongoose.
posted by adamvasco at 6:44 PM on March 17, 2017

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posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:05 PM on March 17, 2017

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posted by TwoStride at 10:33 AM on March 19, 2017

We read part of "The Muse of History" in an English writing workshop I went to as a kid in Jamaica. His point about daffodils has stayed with me.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:28 PM on March 19, 2017