Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Walcott, Derek (Vol. 160) - Bill Greenwell (review date 15 August 1997)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Bill Greenwell (review date 15 August 1997)

SOURCE: Greenwell, Bill. “Buried Treasure.” New Statesman 126, no. 4347 (15 August 1997): 46–47.

[In the following review, Greenwell offers a mixed assessment of The Bounty.]

Derek Walcott—whose previous book, the epic and brilliant Omeros, neatly preceded his Nobel Prize for Literature—is by no means always accessible. It's not that he's hard to understand, nor that his genius is not everywhere self-evident. It's just that he writes with such colossal dignity and sonority, that his poems can sometimes wrap an anchor and chain around even dedicated readers. You are dropped to the ocean floor of his imagination, there to be hauled along on his pondering (and occasionally ponderous) voyage of discovery.

Part of the problem is his unyielding choice of line length (nearly always loose hexameters) and his admirable, even remarkable rhyme schemes, usually inventive near-rhymes...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

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