Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Walcott, writing and the Caribbean: issues and directions
- Chapter 2 Connections and separations: from 25 Poems to The Gulf
- Chapter 3 ‘What a man is’: Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, The Haitian Trilogy and Franklin
- Chapter 4 ‘Is there that I born’: Another Life, Sea Grapes, The Star-Apple Kingdom
- Chapter 5 The challenge of change: the dramatist after Dream
- Chapter 6 ‘Here’ and ‘Elsewhere’, ‘Word’ and ‘World’: The Fortunate Traveller, Midsummer, The Arkansas Testament
- Chapter 7 Narrative variations: Omeros, The Odyssey, The Bounty, Tiepolo's Hound
- Chapter 8 Homecoming: The Prodigal
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - ‘Here’ and ‘Elsewhere’, ‘Word’ and ‘World’: The Fortunate Traveller, Midsummer, The Arkansas Testament
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- List of abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Walcott, writing and the Caribbean: issues and directions
- Chapter 2 Connections and separations: from 25 Poems to The Gulf
- Chapter 3 ‘What a man is’: Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, The Haitian Trilogy and Franklin
- Chapter 4 ‘Is there that I born’: Another Life, Sea Grapes, The Star-Apple Kingdom
- Chapter 5 The challenge of change: the dramatist after Dream
- Chapter 6 ‘Here’ and ‘Elsewhere’, ‘Word’ and ‘World’: The Fortunate Traveller, Midsummer, The Arkansas Testament
- Chapter 7 Narrative variations: Omeros, The Odyssey, The Bounty, Tiepolo's Hound
- Chapter 8 Homecoming: The Prodigal
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
All but two of the ten poems in The Star-Apple Kingdom are set in the Caribbean, and in one of the two that are not, setting is insignificant. By contrast, although the vast majority of the poems in The Fortunate Traveller are also set in the Caribbean, the book makes a point of calling attention to the fact that some of the poems engage with places abroad, more particularly with Europe and the USA. The poems are grouped in three sections, ‘North’, ‘South’ and ‘North’. This structure points up the notion that it is in the relationship between them, the relationship of difference in the first place, that each of the two poles has meaning. The topical North–South divide, at levels including but going beyond the strictly political, becomes a purposive concern in Walcott's poetry, one that involves the negotiating of identity.
The shuttling between South and North also occurs in Midsummer, but less systematically and ‘announcedly’ than in The Fortunate Traveller. The process mutates in The Arkansas Testament into the arrangement of the poems into two groups captioned ‘Here’ and ‘Elsewhere’, the former corresponding to ‘South’ and the latter to ‘North’. However, the polarities continually deconstruct themselves. For instance, at a relatively superficial level, the grouping of poems under ‘North’ and ‘South’ is not so neat and definitive as ostensibly appears.
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- Information
- Derek Walcott , pp. 153 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006