It all starts with Derek Walcott's wonderful new collection. Oh, it's published by a Macmillan imprint. So it may or may not be on Amazon for you folks that shop over there.
From The Front List
White Egrets by Derek Walcott. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Poetry. Hardcover. 86 pps. ISBN: 9780374289294. $24.
I have kept the same furies, though my domestic rage
is illogical, diabetic, with no lessening love
though my hand trembles wildly, but not over this page.
-from "The Sweet Life Cafe", a portion of "In The Village" from White Egrets
This collection has a little more interest surrounding it than is typically due a Nobel Laureate's most recent publication. It is Walcott's first public statement, albeit a literary one, since the shameful event that is appropriately known as the "Padel Controversy."
I only mention the smear campaign supposedly involving poet Ruth Padel during her and Walcott's consideration for the position of Professor Of Poetry at Oxford in 2009 because, well, I love to smear the ivory tower whenever possible.
I do so openly and without proxies, which reminds me...
Allegations of sexual harassment had been levied against Walcott in the past and it seems Padel might have been involved in some form of slander campaign or another using these allegations in order to obtain the position for herself. The smear campaign worked and Walcott removed his candidacy while Padel went on to win. Seems some lead poets weren't impressed with the display and called for Padel's removal. She of course obliged and denied any conscious role in the affair.
So...
Where has this left the great Caribbean writer? Are there subjects now taboo for the aging poet to discuss? In a word: no. Not in Walcott's mind at least, and that's all that matters.
White Egrets is impressively diverse. It follows the threads of mixed heritage that define Caribbean life back to their sources in Europe and beyond. Whether evoking the Egyptian gods via the travels of the Ibis in the collection's title poem or to a town in Italy whose name conjures the same Saint Lucia that Walcott's native island does.
It is impressive pastoral poetry both because of the sublimity of the natural world brought forth and the humanity that Walcott sets upon the stage to behold the miracle of birds and rustling flora.
It is remarkable poetry of the human condition, or the town and the city. Walcott methodically, at times almost plodding, vacillates between the brutishness and beauty of life. This is the poetry of an old man who has seen much and knows how to describe what he has seen.
There is an unabashed longing in White Egrets. The lithe young women who populate many of the narratives are fleeting or ghostly. In some cases they are dead. Loves remembered because they are gone, whether via the force of independent will or by the sepulchral way.
A lesser man might be uncomfortable talking about such liaisons or write the line, "My lust is in great health." Especially considering the "Padel Controversy" is only a lone year on the shelf.
If a theme recurs throughout the collection it is that though love and the strength in a limb may diminish it is poetry, or literature, that may yet provide stability and order in those final years of supposed retreat.
In the opinion of this roustabout, it is the third poem in the collection that conjures this state in its most sad and glorious best. Walcott describes longshoremen working and living beneath the "mountainous freight bound with knots and cinches" of the docks of St. Lucia. Walcott describes it as his "early war" and whether he was a true roustabout or not, he captures the milieu with accuracy that only one of that profession could.
After describing the toil, the camaraderie and quarreling specific to such work, the mighty strength and the massive meals used to stoke the fire of labor, Walcott sends his strongmen into the night.
They go alone, as we all do, but armed with a booming voice that time has left undiminished.
Then one would be terribly injured, one lose a leg
to rum and diabetes. You would watch him shrink
into his nickname, not too proud to beg,
who would roar like a lorry revving in the prime of his drink.
Words, whether roared or etched with steady pen, are the constant. No scandal can change that and personally I can take a great solace in that.
Ivory tower be damned.
From The Back List
"Final Soliloquy Of The Internal Paramour" by Wallace Stevens
For National Poetry Month poets.org always produces a free, downloadable (I know that's not a word) poster each year. It features a different quote from a legendary poem each year. This year they chose one of Wallace Steven's late and most celebrated offerings.
It is also one of bleak dignity before the office of death.
It is not, as August Kleinzahler said of Garrison Keillor, "a middle-aged creative writing instructor catching a whiff of mortality in the countryside."
It is a dirge. It is a beautiful poem and it is available in full online. I hope legally.
Or you can order a copy of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens from Powell's.
Whatever you do, just read it. Enjoy it. I'm off to bellow like a revving lorry. Poetry, after all, is the subjective science.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment