Selected Poems

Resumen del libro

Drawing from every stage of his career, Derek Walcott's Selected Poems brings together famous pieces from his early volumes, including "A Far Cry from Africa" and "A City's Death by Fire," with passages from the celebrated Omeros and selections from his latest major works, which extend his contributions to reenergizing the contemporary long poem. Here we find all of Walcott's essential themes, from grappling with the Caribbean's colonial legacy to his conflicted love of home and of Western literary tradition; from the wisdom-making pain of time and mortality to the strange wonder of love, the natural world, and what it means to be human. We see his lifelong labor at poetic crafts, his broadening of the possibilities of rhyme and meter, stanza forms, language, and metaphor. Edited and with an introduction by the Jamaican poet and critic Edward Baugh, this volume is a perfect representation of Walcott's breadth of work, spanning almost half a century.




Introduction by Edward Baugh

From In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962)
Prelude
As John to Patmos
A City's Death by Fire
A Far Cry from African Ruins of a Great House
Tales of the Islands
Return to D'Ennery; Rain
A Letter from Brooklyn
Islands

From The Castaway and Other Poems (1965)
The Castaway
Tarpon
The Flock
Laventille
The Almond Trees
Verandah
Crusoe's Island
Codicil

From The Gulf and Other Poems (1969)
Mass Man
Homage to Edward Thomas
The Gulf
Blues
Air
Landfall, Grenada
Homecoming: Anse La Raye
Nearing Forty

From Another Life (1973)
Chapter 1
I ("Verandahs, where the pages of the sea")
II ("In its dimensions the drawing could not trace")
Chapter 2
II ("Maman, / only on Sundays was the Singer silent")
III ("Old house, old woman, old room")
Chapter 7
II ("About the August of my fourteenth year")
III ("Our father, / who floated in the vaults of Michangelo")
IV ("Noon, / and its sacred water sprinkles")
V ("Who could tell, in 'the crossing of that pair'")
Chapter 9
I ("There are already, invisible on canvas")
II ("Where did I fail? I could draw")
Chapter 14 ("When the oil green water glows but doesn't catch")
Chapter 20 ("Smug, behind glass, we watch the passengers")
Chapter 22 ("Miasma, acedia, the enervations of damp")

From Sea Grapes (1976)
Sea Grapes
Adam's Song
The Cloud
Parades, Parades
The Bright Field
Sainte Lucie
Volcano
Sea Canes
Midsummer, Tobago
Oddjob, a Bull Terrier
To Return to the Tress

From The Star-Apple Kingdom (1979)
The Schooner Flight
1. Adios, Carenge
3. Shabine Leaves the Republic
4. The Flight, Passing Blanchisseuse
5. Shabine Encounters the Middle Passage
6. The Sailor Sings Back to the Casuarinas
7. The Flight Anchors in Castries Harbour
8. Fight with the Crew
10. Out of the Depths
11. After the Storm
The Sea Is History
The Saddhu of Couva
Forest of Europe

From The Fortunate Traveller (1981)
Piano Practice
Europa
The Spoiler's Return
Early Pompeian
The Fortunate Traveller
The Season of Phantasmal Peace

From Midsummer (1984)
I ("The jet bores like a silverfish through volumes of cloud")
II ("Companion in Rome, whom Rome makes as old as Rome")
VI ("Midsummer stretches beside me with its cat's yawn")
XLIX ("A wind-scraped headland, a sludgy dishwater sea")
LI ("Since all of your work was really an effort to appease")
LIII ("There was one Syrian, with his bicycle, in our town")
LIV ("The midsummer sea, the hot pitch road, this grass, these shacks that made me")

From The Arkansas Testament (1987)
Saint Lucia's First Communion
The Light of the World
Night Fishing
Elsewhere
Winter Lamps
For Adrian
The Arkansas Testament

From Omeros (1990)
Chapter I ("'This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes'")
Chapter III
I ("'Touchez-i, encore: N'ai fendre choux-ous-ou, salope!'")
Chapter IV ("I sat on the white terrace waiting for the cheque")
Chapter V
III ("How fast it fades! Maud thought; the enameled sky")
Chapter XXIV ("From his heart's depth he knew she was never coming")
Chapter XXV ("Mangrove, their ankles in water, walked with the canoe")
Chapter LXIV ("I sang of quiet Achille, Afolabe's son")

From The Bounty (1997)
4 Thanksgiving
14 ("Never get used to this; the feathery, swaying casuarinas")
24 ("Alphaeus Prince, What a name! He was one of the Princes")
26 ("The sublime always begins with the chord 'And then I saw'")
27 ("Praise to the rain, eraser of picnics, praise the grey cloud")
31 Italian Eclogues
I ("On the bright road to Rome, beyond Mantua")
34 ("At the end of this line there is an opening door")

From Tiepolo's Hound (2000)
I ("They stroll on Sundays down Dronningens Street")
VII
1. ("Falling from chimneys, an exhausted arrow ")
2. ("O, the exclamation of white roses, of a wet")
3. ("Since light was simply particles in air")
XXII ("One dawn I woke up to the gradual terror")
XXIV
3. ("I looked beyond the tarmac. A bright field")
4. ("Fall; and a cool blonde crosses Christopher ")
XXVI ("The swallows flit in immortality")

From The Prodigal (2004)
2
I ("Chasms and fissures of the vertiginous Alps")
4
IV ("I wanted to be able to write: 'There is nothing like it'")
6
III ("'So, how was Italy?' My neighbor grinned")
IV ("Blue-grey morning, sunlight shaping Jersey")
9
I ("I lay on the bed near the balcony in Guadalajara")
II ("I carry a small white city in my head")
IV ("When we were boys coming home from the beach")
13
I ("Flare of the flame tree and white egrets stalking")
II ("And the first voice replied in the foam")
III ("So has it come to this, to have to choose?")

15
I ("Ritorno a Milano, if that's correct")
16
II ("A grey dawn, dun. Rain-gauze shrouding the headlines")
17
II ("Compare Milan, compare a glimpse of the Arno")
18
III ("We were headed steadily into the open sea")
IIV ("I had gaped in anticipation of an emblem")

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;p x{0026}lt;strong Derek Walcottx{0026}lt;/strong (1930-2017) nació en Castries, capital de la antigua colonia británica de Santa Lucía, una isla en las Antillas Menores. Nieto de esclavos e hijo de un pintor británico que murió cuando él tenía un año de edad, a esta mezcla de culturas hay que añadir que su familia fuera protestante en una comunidad donde predominaba el catolicisimo. Estudió en el University College of the West Indies y fundó el Trinidad Theater Workshop. Autor de numerosas obras de teatro y libros de poesía, entre sus obras traducidas al castellano destacan x{0026}lt;em Islasx{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em Otra vidax{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em Pleno veranox{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em El testamento de Arkansasx{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em La voz del crepúsculox{0026}lt;/em , x{0026}lt;em La abundanciax{0026}lt;/em y x{0026}lt;em Garcetas blancasx{0026}lt;/em , merecedora del Premio T. S. Eliot 2010. x{0026}lt;em x{0026}lt;strong Omeros x{0026}lt;/strong x{0026}lt;/em está considerada como su obra maestra y fue galardonada con el WH Smith Literary Award. En 1992 le fue concedido el Premio Nobel.x{0026}lt;/p x{0026}lt;p Fotografía Lisbeth Salasx{0026}lt;/p