Walcott, Derek (Vol. 4) | Walcott, Derek 1930–
Walcott, Derek 1930–
Walcott is a West Indian playwright and poet. The relationships between men and God and men and society have been the principal themes of his intelligent and sophisticated poems and plays.
Derek Walcott's … plays range through myth and folklore, against backgrounds as much allegorical as they are Caribbean. The laments of superstitious fishermen, charcoal-burners and prisoners are quirkily counter-pointed by talking crickets, frogs and birds. Demons are raised, dreams take actual shape, supernatural voices mingle with the natural lilting elliptical speech rhythms of downtrodden natives. Mr Walcott … is a social commentator who conceals his messages in elaborate poetic wrappers not always easy to unfold, but he is a powerful visionary as well as a compassionate observer of misfits lost in a world they never made.
...Romilly Cavan, in Books and Bookmen, April, 1972, pp. 59-61.
[The entire page is 2310 words long]
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