Reviews

• A Compelling Read!

  In White Egrets his expressions drip with candor. It is clear that he represents the pulse of Caribbean poetry. He speaks so eloquently about his West Indian existence. "There never really was a `we' or `ours' whatever each enjoyed was separate." In White Egrets he has allowed the reader to travel around the world with him and you move to the rhythm, rhyme of his poetry. White Egrets is soaked in imagery, including the paintings of "Frans, Hals,and Rembrandt." One can metaphorically hear the sounds of this book as his depth details is compelling, original and his observations are sparkling. This book is a composition of varying lengths. He puts his feelings into words as he expresses himself with his own inner voice which for him is a natural beat, as he is unconcerned about the prospect of human opinion or annihilation. He is an honest poet as he questions his permanent value, he wonders if he has lost his gift of poetry he wonders if his "gift has withered" but one thing he clearly states and concedes in White Egrets is that if he has truly lost his gift he should be grateful. He says "be grateful that you wrote well in this place." I hope this is not his last. White Egrets is a must have for any library and great gift. White Egrets for me is perfection in its raw form, time indeed as inflicted him with wisdom. Brenda McCartney [...]

• Painting pictures in words

  This poetry book is full of wonderful poems. Initially they are not easy because one looks for deep meaning. However these are a old man’s poems that paint in words pictures of his past. These are poems that need to be read aloud. The language Walcott uses to craft his poetry lifts you out of drab England and gives you a view of a different , very beautiful world.

• A marvel

  A haunting supreme collection by a poet at the end of his life. Wonderfully repeated images.

• my highest recommendation

  if you ask me to name my favorite poet, without hestitation i would answer derek walcott. any collection of poems by walcott is reason for a personal celebration, White Egrets no less, and in my enthusiasm i would hope that you find in the poems in this book by mr walcott at least some of the pleasure that i do. when speaking of poetry, there's always talk of the line. one from White Egrets chosen at random: `hide her face in mist and the barred sun shrivel' i remove my finger from the page and look up and see the line is from the poem, Epithalamium: The Rainy Season. an epithalamium is a wedding song, and the poem was written `For Stephanos and Heather', a couple who means nothing to me, but who must be very special to mr walcott for him to dedicate a poem to them. their wedding in a rainy season is captured in the one line i selected at random; the mist become veil and the sun shrivel the appearance as the folds created by the drape of the veil, as well as being an allusion to a shakespearean sonnet. any line by walcott would reveal as many gifts. as a reader i am honored to be recipient of his poems, several of them, like White Egrets, for and in memory of his friends, like the joseph of white egrets, his good friend and fellow nobel laureate holder, joseph brodsky. there's a poem here to president barack obama, Forty Acres, of an engraving: `Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving - a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls, an emblem of impossible prophecy: a crowd dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed, parting for their president; a field of snow-flecked cotton forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten cotton-haired ancestors, ... ` not the american ancestors of mr obama, but the ancestors of a more extended culture, and the direct ancestors of his wife and his daughters who are part of a race who claim him, and he has accepted and claimed as his own through the mingled blood of family. and there are other poems of travel, reminiscences, old lovers, aging and the feel of the loss of poetic powers, a trope of old men, real and fictional as prospero, a character from one of walcott's favorite shakespearean plays. his poetry remains grounded in the west indian island of his birth and the british island that gave birth to many of the poets of a tradition, problematic to him, which he's honored as one of the tradition's noblest and most distinguished poets. the couplet he inserts in A London Afternoon: `but though from court to cottage he depart, his saint is sure of his unspotted heart' by the 16th century british poet, george peele, entitled A Farewell to Arms, concludes with the couplet: `Goddess, allow this aged man his right To be your beadsman now that was your knight.' no poet serves, or has served, poetry better, than derek walcott.

• egrets and regrets

  Derek Walcott is one of the finest poets of the last 50 years. His command of the English language is astonishing (hawks sitting on the wrist of a branch), his images are unforgettable (the heart that returns like the waves splashing against the rocks), his touches are heart-breaking. There are influences of a European culture that has now gone beyond the English culture so dear to Walcott. His waves' image reminds me of Rebora at his best (E giunge l'onda, ma non giunge il mare...). White Egrets is not a book you should devour. It is a book one should read slowly, one poem each night, to savour and to remuginate about. It is the book of an old poet who has made peace with his troubled soul and finally accepts his life for whatever it has been. It reminds me of what one of my teachers used to say, that God gave us memories so the we may have roses in December. Walcott has egrets, white egrets.....

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