Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Walcott, Derek (Vol. 160) - Adam Kirsch (review date 15 September 2000)

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Adam Kirsch (review date 15 September 2000)

SOURCE: Kirsch, Adam. “Singing the Griot's Song.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5085 (15 September 2000): 10–11.

[In the following review, Kirsch provides an overview of Walcott's life and writing through a discussion of Bruce King's biography, Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life, and offers a positive assessment of Walcott's Tiepolo's Hound.]

Every poet begins as a provincial, dreaming of emigration to the city of the honoured dead. “I think I shall be among the English poets after my death,” wrote Keats, and the ambiguity is moving; he wants to be remembered as one of them, but also actually to walk and talk with them, like Dante with Virgil. To live on the fringes of literary society may, then, be an advantage to a poet's literary culture. He sees no reason not to converse directly with the authors he knows only from books, he does not need his passport stamped by London or New...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Lucas (review date 2 February 1990)
   2. John Lucas (review date 5 October 1990)
   3. Christopher Benfey (review date 29 October 1990)
   4. Nicholas Everett (review date 11 July 1991)
   5. Sven Birkerts (review date February 1993)
   6. Stephen Breslow (essay date spring 1993)
   7. Stephen Breslow (review date winter 1994)
   8. Derek Walcott and Marina Benjamin (interview date 21 July 1995)
   9. John Bayley (review date 27 March 1997)
   10. Jahan Ramazani (essay date May 1997)
   11. Derek Walcott and Rose Styron (interview date May–June 1997)
   12. Bill Greenwell (review date 15 August 1997)
   13. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 8 September 1997)
   14. Richard Sanger (review date 19 September 1997)
   15. Ian Sansom (review date 11 December 1997)
   16. Adam Kirsch (review date 15 December 1997)
   17. Bruce King (review date winter 1998)
   18. Richard Tillinghast (review date winter 1998)
   19. John Thieme (essay date 1999)
   20. Bruce King (review date winter 1999)
   21. Ronny Noor (review date spring 1999)
   22. Iain Bamforth (review date 1 October 1999)
   23. Jeff Gundy (review date spring 2000)
   24. Judith Kitchen (review date spring 2000)
   25. Charles Lock (essay date spring 2000)
   26. A. Alvarez (review date 11 May 2000)
   27. Adam Kirsch (review date 15 September 2000)
   28. Jim Hannan (review date autumn 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Derek Walcott