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"'Walcott is a poet of metaphor. His transmogrifying gift with sensory detail, and his magical conversion of landscape back into the scribal culture that seeks it out, simply mesmerise.' Fred D'Aguiar, Independent 'Sometimes people win Nobel prizes for a reason... One can't ask for better.' Economist 'The Prodigal is a work of apparent leave-taking, a settling of accounts, mixing sober self-assessment with ecstatic praise of the variousness of the world. [Walcott has] an inexhaustible gift for making the world present.' Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times"
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The Prodigal, Derek Walcott's new collection, is a dazzling odyssey for the twenty-first century. Beginning on America's East Coast, the poem journeys restlessly through the European continent, exploring the inheritance of the Old World upon Walcott's native St Lucia, and sees the poet wondering about his own sense of abandonment, whether to leave a place is to lose it. The Prodigal is a compelling steer between exile and belonging, Europe and the New World, wanderlust and the inevitable pull of home.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
For well over 50 years Derek Walcott has dazzled us with some great poems. This nobel laureate has a huge and impressive body of work to his name. Perhaps Walcott's magnum opus is his epic poem Omeros. The Prodigal is the third volume of poems since Omeros so on coming to read it I wondered what now, what are the themes and issues that Walcott will address?
The Pordigal is a book length poem rendered in blank verse style. Although not on the same scale as Omeros, this particular style puts the Prodigal into the category of an epic poem.
The narrative is well structured and carefully wrought. The nameless narrator wanders across continents: America, the Caribbean and Europe. The Narrator travels by land, sea and air and describes, at times movingly, his observations. He, or perhaps she, admires and depicts a sense of belonging to the terrain observed.
As usual Walcott's language is not always easy to penetrate. The text is highly intertextual. For example, there are references to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ice Maiden" or a particular one I liked was Rembrandt's "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild". What I find engaging and interesting about Walcott's references to these European texts is that, as an African-caribbean, he appears to, quite rightly, claim them as part of his heritage.
I am a fan of Walcott because as an African-caribbean myself his poem resonate profoundly with me. For instance the following lines: "When we were boys coming home form the beach/ ... The body would be singing with salt, the sunlight hummed through the skin/ and a fierce thirst made ice water a gasping benediction ..., takes me back to long sunny days on the beach and then at the end of the the day I would trek home just gasping for a long cool drink.
If as it has been suggested, The Prodigal is Walcott's last book, then it is not too surprising that he revisits some old themes that run through earlier poems - for example, the Caribbean landscape, Walcott's mixed heritage, and history. Like a coda these themes are rendered as a tender and loving tribute to the Caribbean. For example, "From the salt brightness of my balcony/ I look across to the abandoned fort;/ no history left, just natuaral history,/ as a cloud's shawdow subtilizes thought." For those familiar with Caribbean history this meditation is quite moving.
For me, ultimately, The Prodigal is a meditation upon the things that shape lives. It dwells upon history, geography and culture. The poem celebrates the fact that as social beings we are ultimately made of a rich and hybrid culture.
Walcott has been hailed as the greatest living poet writing in English. I thing that the breath and depth of his work justifies that claim.
The Pordigal is a book length poem rendered in blank verse style. Although not on the same scale as Omeros, this particular style puts the Prodigal into the category of an epic poem.
The narrative is well structured and carefully wrought. The nameless narrator wanders across continents: America, the Caribbean and Europe. The Narrator travels by land, sea and air and describes, at times movingly, his observations. He, or perhaps she, admires and depicts a sense of belonging to the terrain observed.
As usual Walcott's language is not always easy to penetrate. The text is highly intertextual. For example, there are references to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ice Maiden" or a particular one I liked was Rembrandt's "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild". What I find engaging and interesting about Walcott's references to these European texts is that, as an African-caribbean, he appears to, quite rightly, claim them as part of his heritage.
I am a fan of Walcott because as an African-caribbean myself his poem resonate profoundly with me. For instance the following lines: "When we were boys coming home form the beach/ ... The body would be singing with salt, the sunlight hummed through the skin/ and a fierce thirst made ice water a gasping benediction ..., takes me back to long sunny days on the beach and then at the end of the the day I would trek home just gasping for a long cool drink.
If as it has been suggested, The Prodigal is Walcott's last book, then it is not too surprising that he revisits some old themes that run through earlier poems - for example, the Caribbean landscape, Walcott's mixed heritage, and history. Like a coda these themes are rendered as a tender and loving tribute to the Caribbean. For example, "From the salt brightness of my balcony/ I look across to the abandoned fort;/ no history left, just natuaral history,/ as a cloud's shawdow subtilizes thought." For those familiar with Caribbean history this meditation is quite moving.
For me, ultimately, The Prodigal is a meditation upon the things that shape lives. It dwells upon history, geography and culture. The poem celebrates the fact that as social beings we are ultimately made of a rich and hybrid culture.
Walcott has been hailed as the greatest living poet writing in English. I thing that the breath and depth of his work justifies that claim.
Format:Hardcover
Walcott shows-off his sense of place, time, and ambiance drawing out every relvent part of the journey with a surgeons accuracy -
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
Home
19 Nov 2011
Format:Paperback
"The Prodigal" is a travelogue with a difference. Written in blank verse (bordering on free verse), Walcott's wanderings are viewed through a very personal lens that reveals less about the places per se, but more about his internal landscape as he moves forwards and backwards to review memories and experiences. In a sense it enriches the sense of place because he invest it with so much meaning and insight.
The poem is structured in 3 parts. From New York to the Swiss Alps to Milan, to Pescara in the first part, he travels to Latin America in the second part, moving ever closer to home, St Lucia in the Caribbean, which he returns to in the third part. Walcott lapses into third person at will, as if indicate the immediacy of moment-by-moment experience - the Walcott who experiences the scenery is not the Walcott who records it down in poetry as the experience is passed even as he writes it down on hindsight.
The trajectory of his journey may be unconscious, but like a true prodigal, the return to homeland is sweetened by his being away:
'This bedraggled backyard, this unfulfilled lot,
this little field of leaves, brittle and fallen,
of all the cities of the world, this is your centre.
Oh to be luminous and exact!' (p.84)
It is interesting to note that while a longing for home draws him ever closer to St Lucia, he nonetheless claims a universal sort of citizenship that is not bound by geography in the following lines:
'...and if they asked
what country I was from I'd say, "The light
of that tree-lined sunrise down the Via Veneto."' (p.29)
Home is also where he is.
The poem is structured in 3 parts. From New York to the Swiss Alps to Milan, to Pescara in the first part, he travels to Latin America in the second part, moving ever closer to home, St Lucia in the Caribbean, which he returns to in the third part. Walcott lapses into third person at will, as if indicate the immediacy of moment-by-moment experience - the Walcott who experiences the scenery is not the Walcott who records it down in poetry as the experience is passed even as he writes it down on hindsight.
The trajectory of his journey may be unconscious, but like a true prodigal, the return to homeland is sweetened by his being away:
'This bedraggled backyard, this unfulfilled lot,
this little field of leaves, brittle and fallen,
of all the cities of the world, this is your centre.
Oh to be luminous and exact!' (p.84)
It is interesting to note that while a longing for home draws him ever closer to St Lucia, he nonetheless claims a universal sort of citizenship that is not bound by geography in the following lines:
'...and if they asked
what country I was from I'd say, "The light
of that tree-lined sunrise down the Via Veneto."' (p.29)
Home is also where he is.
7 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A flock of commas
3 Nov 2004
Format:Hardcover
In the "Prodigal", the noble poet luareate, Walcott proves again
he is a man of humble proportion with grand perspective. This landscape of memory lives in poignant hues. His flock of commas soar across stanzas of history. In the color nuiance, he bares his painted soul, so we may grow.
he is a man of humble proportion with grand perspective. This landscape of memory lives in poignant hues. His flock of commas soar across stanzas of history. In the color nuiance, he bares his painted soul, so we may grow.
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