Word: walcottã
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...career follows a different trajectory. Yeats’ style evolved and improved throughout his long career; Wordsworth composed his greatest works in his youth, but continued writing through his old age. The deterioration of poetic talent must be one of the greatest fears of an aging poet. Although Derek Walcott??who turned eighty this past January—is a Nobel Laureate and the author of over twenty published volumes of poetry, the dread of losing his poetic ability permeates “White Egrets,” his newest collection. He writes...
...Walcott is in no danger of harming the craft of poetry. Far from it, he writes in characteristically powerful verse, maintaining a pulsing rhythm and forceful voice throughout his collection. “White Egrets” is composed of a sequence of poems that range in subject from Walcott??s travels in Italy and Spain to his former love affairs. As he explores a wide array of memories and places, the poet attempts to come to terms with his recollections of the past and the effects of age upon his body and mind...
...poem “In Italy,” in which he speaks of his experience in Italy as an elderly man, he writes, “my hair rhymes with those far crests and the bells / of the hilltop towers number my errors.” Walcott??s repetitious images of whiteness create a lyrical continuity among his poems. Each one can easily stand on its own, but together they form a natural sequence of memories and contemplations...
...times, Walcott??s obsession with the effects of age runs the risk of becoming too personal, or even self-indulgent. Details of his physical ailments and his fear of waning virility can detract from his deeper meditations on his hopes, his regrets, and his poetry. At one point, he describes “a furious itch that raises welts” over his body; elsewhere he writes, “My lust is in great health, but, if it happens / that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand, / joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pens...
...always returns to those figures of purity and openness, the white birds who are symbols of both age and immortality. With a long career already behind him, Walcott??s concern lies not only with the precariousness of his physical life, but also with the lifespan of the poetry that he has spent a lifetime crafting. This collection, however, indicates that there is no cause for the poet’s anxiety. Walcott has managed to shape a sequence of poems as blindingly majestic as the birds for which they are named...