Product Description
Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott--three Nobel laureates and threeof our generation's greatest poets explore the misconceptions and mythologiesthat surround one of America's most famous and beloved deceased poets--RobertFrost.Amazon.com Review
Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, Nobellaureates all, have written perceptive, affectionate, admiring essayson Robert Frost. Eschewing both of the prevailing caricatures of Frost(the irascible but beloved cracker-barrel philosopher and the shallowmegalomaniac), these writers pay careful attention to the poemsthemselves. They open doors into the world of words that Frostconstructed, and help readers understand the music and the ideas inthose worlds. Derek Walcott's dark reading of Frost's much-quotedclassic, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," is aloneworth the price of Homage to Robert Frost. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

This is a wonderful companion to hearing Frost's seemingly off handed reading of his material
This is a marvelous little book to be savoured at every chance and to be re-read as well. Its instructive for both the reader of poetry and the writer of poetry and every student of poetry should read this little masterpiece.It contains many insights and adds a much needed depth to the Frost that many may suspect is not there. Brodsky's erudite rendering of Frost as a student of Virgil makes me want to run back to Virgil and read other works by him besides the Aeneid and go to The Eclogues, also called Bucolics.

Brodsky's explanation of Frost's work is the best I've seen
If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost,buy this& read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial".What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet.But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

A glimpse into how poets read poets
Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Walcott's Omeros
Omeros! A treat for the lover of language.Much has been and will bewritten ofthis literary challenge : plot, characters, and segueing epic; but little will ever do justice to the heart of the matter,- ( which demands thisconscious encomium.)

What for Habermas is the ideal of communicative actionis celebratedin Walcott as the action of poetic communication. Walcott paints.

On every page, heoffers the reader a life time of disciplined observation - the fruit of whichhe dispenses with prodigal largesse.

This humble,almost unconsciousmaster of metaphor is able to enterunerringly intothe consciousness of things and to emerge from that dive with pearls,whose inner flower-flames he unfurls or explodesin liquid light for the benefit of all.

One wishes that Omeros hadremained faithful to its native soil - the simple wisdom of Aristotelianunity. The manifold may well betoo vast and seems to dilute the poetic distillation. (Though the genre itself andWalcott's coupledethnicityexculpate,one still wishes ...etc.)

The work is all done in and as an act of love; still, a brochetting irk pensiles in the mind :
How can a love so in love with its art and the art of its art be anything but artful.

Anticipating the critics who- like he says elsewhere- would spaniel after him like an old stag tohang their theseson the exclamationsof his antlers, Walcott may well have an answer to this and other squibs. Hisarrowing sea-swift Omeros veers andscales with extra territorial sui generis facticity.

The rich pyrotechnics of his fractaling passion,is,like a flung star,a challenge to young energetic poets like Colin Carberry of Ireland , Kendel Hippolyte andMc.DonaldDixon from the Islands.

Omeros should hold a prominent place on everybookshelf. ... Read more

Product Description
Walcott's eight collection of poems is divided into two parts -- "There," verse evoking the poet's native Carribbean, and "Elsewhere."
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Scintillating and rapturous
I gave this volume to a friend who had no experience of reading poetry (since school, that is), and had asked me what sort of poems he could start with.I pointed out a couple of poems that I thought were highlights, and wished him good luck.When I met up with him a week later, he burst into excited praise for the book.He'd started on the poems I had suggested, and rapidly proceeded to read the whole collection, several times over.
I quite agree with his response - in my early 20s this was one of the books that got me excited in contemporary poets and poetry.While Walcott is not foremost an experimentalist - and he might at odd moments almost be thought a sentimentalist - his sheer joy of craft and wordsmithing is a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold.This book is one of those things that can remind you why life is worth living.It's that good. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate

On a cold winter's day on the Dakota plains, Catherine Weldon receives a caller, Kicking Bear, bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby, a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance, first performed in 1989, Walcott turns a story with a foregone conclusion -- Sitting Bull and his Sioux followers will die at the hands of the Army and Indian agents -- into a portrait of life at a crossroads of American history.

In Walker, an opera first performed in 1992 and revised for its revival in 2001, Walcott shifts his attention east, taking for his subject David Walker, the nineteenth-century black abolitionist. In Walcott 's hands Walker becomes a classical hero for his people: a leader who is also a poet.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

First Opinions
I took note of the name of Derek Walcott when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature some years back.I'm not one for poetry so I didn't go out looking for any of his books.However, while in his home island of St Lucia in the Carribean, I came across this book comprising two of his plays.The first, "Walker", was the story of a free Black man in Boston circa 1830.He is in the process of printing a pamphlet that advocates an uprising of slaves.Others try to change his mind and we get the gist of the man through these conversations.The message I got from the play is that violent methods leads to violent ends.

I got more out of the second play, "The Ghost Dance", in large part because I had coincidently just finished a book on the subject.That gave me an historical perspective that I didn't have of "Walker" (I had never heard of David Walker before).This play has a variety of characters that interact in a manner that bring insight to cultural conflicts.There are a number of relationships that fail, fall apart, or remain in unresolvable conflict.I appreciated the way the character and situations were woven together.I also appreciated that it all took place in my home state of North Dakota.It was a good, but not great, play.I couldn't help but notice Mr. Walcott's periodic use of metered rhyme in some of his dialogue.I guess it comes naturally for him.I'm glad I read these two plays but I won't be going out of my way to find more of his work.On the other hand, I WOULD like to return to St. Lucia. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of poems by contemporary poet, Derek Walcott, whose subject is the panorama of life, landscape, culture and politics of the West Indies. ... Read more

Product Description
This anthology of poetry is selected to portray the various themes of the Caribbean. ... Read more