Book Description
Increased and accelerated processes of cultural syncretism have produced new configurations of identity for which theories of hybridity, matissage, and cosmopolitanism have been deployed and reworked in order to capture the polycentric and polysemic aspects of a new political philosophy of the Other. Under pressure from localized resistances, these terms no longer provide adequate frameworks for articulating the critical issues of difference and the asymmetry of evolving contemporary cultures. Beginning as a full-fledged literary movement in the late 1980s in the French Caribbean, Craolita ventured into the "chaos" produced by history to reclaim nationalist Creole identities. As a hypothesis of cultural production, the subsequent process of creolization reaches far beyond the plantation cultures of the Caribbean, towards a conceptualization of a non-totalitarian consciousness of preserved diversity that has its contested terrain within language, identity, politics, religion, and culture. Transcending still entrenched postcolonial and imperialist narratives of domination and resistance, center and periphery, creolization as a theory of creative disorder analyses active urban contest and contact zones in flux. It expresses a need for particularization that, by embedding Creole dynamics into sociopolitical and sociolinguistic histories, reformulates territories of art, architecture, dance, film, music, poetry, cuisine, oral literature, magic, and carnival. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, Nobel laureates all, have written perceptive, affectionate, admiring essays on Robert Frost. Eschewing both of the prevailing caricatures of Frost (the irascible but beloved cracker-barrel philosopher and the shallow megalomaniac), these writers pay careful attention to the poems themselves. They open doors into the world of words that Frost constructed, and help readers understand the music and the ideas in those worlds. Derek Walcott's dark reading of Frost's much-quoted classic, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," is alone worth the price of Homage to Robert Frost. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This is a wonderful companion to hearing Frost's seemingly off handed reading of his material
This is a marvelous little book to be savoured at every chance and to be re-read as well. Its instructive for both the reader of poetry and the writer of poetry and every student of poetry should read this little masterpiece.It contains many insights and adds a much needed depth to the Frost that many may suspect is not there. Brodsky's erudite rendering of Frost as a student of Virgil makes me want to run back to Virgil and read other works by him besides the Aeneid and go to The Eclogues, also called Bucolics.

Brodsky's explanation of Frost's work is the best I've seen
If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost,buy this& read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial".What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet.But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

A glimpse into how poets read poets
Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
In this book, Dante, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott engage in an eloquent and meaningful conversation. Dante's capacity for being faithful to the collective historical experience and true to the recognitions of the emerging self, the permanent immediacy of his poetry, the healthy state of his language, which is so close to the object that the two are identified, and his adamant refusal to get lost in the wide and open sea of abstraction - all these are shown to have affected, and to continue to affect, Heaney's and Walcott's work. The Flight of the Vernacular, however, is not only a record of what Dante means to the two contemporary poets but also a cogent study of Heaney's and Walcott's attitude towards language and of their views on the function of poetry in our time. Heaney's programmatic endeavour to be “adept at dialect” and Walcott's idiosyncratic redefinition of the vernacular in poetry as tone rather than as dialect - apart from having Dantean over! tones - are presented as being associated with the belief that poetry is a social reality and that language is a living alphabet bound to the “opened ground” of the world. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on March 22, 1996. The length of the article is 671 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama: 'Not Only a Playwright But a Company' - The Trinidad Theater Workshop, 1959-1993.
Author: Harold A. Waters
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1996
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: v70Issue: n2Page: p450(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on April 1, 2003. The length of the article is 749 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Paul Breslin. Nobody's Nation: Reading Derek Walcott.(Book Review)
Author: Jim Hannan
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 2003
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 77Issue: 1Page: 88(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Calming Shades and Refresing Breeze From the Caribbean
Hamner's updated study of Derek Walcott is a great introduction to Walcott's ever expanding oeuvre. His views are balanced and magisterial. A great companion to this book is a chronological collection of essays,"Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott", edited by Hamnerhimself.

Most critic of Walcott tend to fall prey to the dichotomy offolk poet versus literary humanist. Hamner avoids this pitfall by stressingthe Walcott's vision of man as an exile, a castaway.

In the firstchapter, Hamner surveys the social and cultural situations of West Indiesout of which Walcott emerged. He also outlines his development phases andcommon theme.Once these foundations are sketched, he then breaksWalcott's works into five phases in the following chapters.Along thischronological approach, he shrewdly intersperses Walcott's poetry, playsand sometimes prose to illuminate his points. They are threaded lightlywith Walcott's biography. The last chapter is reserved for studyingWalcott's prose. The overall framework is excellent as the reader canappreciate Walcott's oeuvre like the lights refracted through acrystal.

Flipping through the pages, one hears Walcott's lines like waveslapping on the beach of time. Like the palm trees on the beach, Hamner'sbook offers calming shades and, now and then, some refreshingbreeze.

(Footnote. The 2-page chronology of Walcott's life can beimproved. e.g. In addition to the years when Walcott's works were publishedand performed, when were his marriages and divorces, the birth of hischildren ?I am not suggesting that one should dissect the workspsychologically. These datelines may give the reader a fuller picture ofWalcott.) ... Read more

Book Description