Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Walcott, Derek (Vol. 160) - Jim Hannan (review date autumn 2000)

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Jim Hannan (review date autumn 2000)

SOURCE: Hannan, Jim. Review of Tiepolo's Hound, by Derek Walcott. World Literature Today 74, no. 4 (autumn 2000): 797–98.

[In the following positive review, Hannan praises Tiepolo's Hound, complimenting Walcott's “calm and devastating clarity.”]

Derek Walcott's long poem on the congruence between art, art history, and the state of one's soul abounds with his singular ability to combine passion with elegance, historical rumination with arresting images, and social consciousness with minute observations of texture, sound, and color. Walcott revisits themes from his previous poetry, including exchanges between Europe and the Caribbean, the power inherent in language and naming, the artist as exile, and the role of culture in contemporary life. Like much of his poetry, this poem excels when craft and vision coalesce with resonant exactitude, as when Walcott describes the painter Camille...

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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