Derek Walcott's identity as a poet is evident even in his literary criticism. Who else would produce a sentence such as "Let the shaggy, long horde of spiky letters and the dark rumbling of hexametrical phalanxes rise over the outback towards the capital of the English language" to describe the work of a fellow poet--in this case, Australian Les Murray? Indeed, each of the essays in What the Twilight Says is at least as rich in language as it is in ideas; so much so, in fact, that at times the view is obscured by the verbiage. Nevertheless, beneath the loco rococo turns of phrase Walcott has some serious points to make. In his discussion of V.S. Naipaul, for example, he offers some telling insights into the effects of colonialism on his subject's psyche: "What is the cost to his Indianness of loving England?" Walcott asks; "To whom does he owe any fealty? Ancestors? The surroundings that history placed them in, the cane fields of Trinidad, were contemptible, as they themselves would have to be, having lost both shame and pride. Therefore, the only dignity is to be neither master nor servant, to choose a nobler servitude: writing. The punishment for the choice is the astonishment of gratitude; to be grateful to the vegetation of an English shire. Not to India or the West Indies, but to the sweet itch of an old wound." Walcott praises Naipaul's genius while calling him on his racism, selfishness, and disdain for his roots--in effect loving the sinner while hating the sin. His essay on Joseph Brodsky is an intelligent meditation on the art of translation while "The Muse of History" looks at the influence of history in New World literature. From a discussion of the poetry of Ted Hughes to an open love letter to Martiniquan writer Patrick Chamoiseau, Derek Walcott provides plenty of provocative food for thought wrapped in poetical prose. --Alix Wilber


From Publishers Weekly
In essays originally published between 1970 and 1997, Walcott, winner of a Nobel prize in 1992 for his poetry and plays (Omeros, The Bounty), engages with literature, politics and their intersection. This is Walcott's first prose collection but the writing here is so intense that it threatens to disintegrate into lyric; in fact, the pieces deserve to be read aloud for their finely wrought metaphors, their intelligent, conversational observations and the beauty of their sound. Brilliant insights come suddenly, even unexpectedly, as in the aside that "reading [Wallace] Stevens is like having Chocolate for breakfast." Most of the essays are considerations of a wide range of writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Joseph Brodsky and Ernest Hemingway. The remaining few, including the Nobel prize address, "The Antilles: Fragments of an Epic Memory," are intense meditations on the state of West Indian writing and culture. A recurring concern is the relation of the postcolonial writer to the imperial language: Walcott, who now lives in both the United States and his native St. Lucia, describes "barbarian Bards" who "recite long passages of the imperial literature as if it were their own; and with a vigour, even a love, that brings a blush to the civilized cheek." But while he criticizes V.S. Naipaul for turning his back on the West Indies, and praises card-carrying anti-imperialists like C.L.R. James and Aime Cesaire, Walcott is no hard-liner. He is indignant toward those who reject any aspect of the West Indian heritage, whether it be African, Asian, indigenous American or European, acting on his own contention that poetry must not dwell on the scars of history, but should instead embrace the beauty and the possibilities of the present. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Twilight--that dramatic and melancholy transition--is the perfect trope for Nobel laureate Walcott, a West Indian born of forces as opposite as day and night--of light skin and dark, of conquerors and the enslaved, of the old and the new. The first set of essays in this collection of powerful meditations focuses on the confounding confluence of cultures found in the Caribbean. In the title essay, Walcott reveals how the conflict between his deep love of the English language and his anguish over the horrors and injustices of racism and colonialism made finding his voice as a poet and playwright excruciatingly difficult. "The truest writers are those who see language not as linguistic process but as a living element," he writes, and, indeed, he himself makes no distinction between life and literature, whether he's writing poetry or brilliant assessments of the work of his peers, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost, V. S. Naipaul, and Les Murray. Walcott's vision is global, his candor electrifying, his piercing insights and oceanic eloquence transcendent. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
A poet's (poetical) prose about poetry. Walcott's (The Bounty, etc.) humid rhetoric can overwhelm a subject, as when ``I try to divert my concentration from that mesmeric gritted oyster of sputum on the concrete floor.'' And so, a reader wandering through the periodically flowery byways and orotund arabesques of these 14 essays may long, instead, at times, for a more plainspoken, adamantine critical voicelike that, say, of poet-critic Mary Karr. Yet entwined here with the tricky verbal vines and orchids are also insights of an unusual provenance. West Indianborn Walcott's views of current poetry and postcolonial culture are admirably independent and syncretic. He is able to take the measure of such stylistically distinct avatars as the relentlessly, redemptively flinty British poet Philip Larkin and American confessionalist Robert Lowell. Walcott spikes his intermittently languid reveries with comments that crackle: ``Modern American poetics is as full of its sidewalk hawkers as a modern American city: this is the only meter, this is the American way to breathe, this is the variable foot,'' he complains. That error isn't his. Rather, the 1992 Nobel laureate explores, in the emphatic plural, poetry's various islands, while diverging now and then to authors of prose. He claims Hemingway as ``a West Indian writer'' and salutes the Trinidadian C.L.R. James for Beyond a Boundary, termed by Walcott a cricketer's Iliad.'' Still, our critic's lens isn't flawless. As an apologist for Ted Hughes, Walcott proves laughably sentimental: ``Poets come to look like their poetry . . . Hughes's face emerges through the pane of paper in its weathered openness as both friendly and honest. It speaks trust.'' Rather conspicuously in an era of major contemporary women poets, the book omits positive mention of women (save for Dickinson) as anything more than muselike pretty faces; they are simply not part of Walcott's poetic roll call. But so goes literary independence. An archaic male vanity makes some mistakes on the poetic prowl. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Sven Birkerts, The New Republic
There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can


Review
"There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can."--Sven Birkerts, The New Republic

"Walcott is a kingfisher critic, with flashing insights, an original who writes a profound, poetic prose . . . Derek Walcott's words go from strength to strength."--Paula Burnett, The Times (London)



Review
"There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can."--Sven Birkerts, The New Republic

"Walcott is a kingfisher critic, with flashing insights, an original who writes a profound, poetic prose . . . Derek Walcott's words go from strength to strength."--Paula Burnett, The Times (London)



Book Description
The first collection of essays by the Nobel laureate.

Derek Walcott has been publishing essays in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and elsewhere for more than twenty years. What the Twilight Says collects these pieces to form a volume of remarkable elegance, concision, and brilliance. It includes Walcott's moving and insightful examinations of the paradoxes of Caribbean culture, his Nobel lecture, and his reckoning of the work and significance of such poets as Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost, Les Murray, and Ted Hughes, and of prose writers such as V. S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau. On every subject he takes up, Walcott the essayist brings to bear the lyric power and syncretic intelligence that have made him one of the major poetic voices of our time.



Card catalog description
What the Twilight Says collects Derek Walcott's essays from over twenty years. It includes Walcott's moving and insightful examinations of the paradoxes of Caribbean culture (including his noted Nobel Lecture), and his reckonings of the work and significance of such poets as Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky. Robert Frost, and Ted Hughes and of the novelists V.S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau. The book also contains Walcott's short story "Cafe Martinique," which traces the life of a colonial writer who is trapped in the values of the nineteenth century. What the Twilight Says reveals that Walcott is a writer whose prose has the same lyric power and syncretic intelligence that have made him one of the major poetic voices of our time.


About the Author
Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia in 1930. His recent works include Omeros and The Bounty. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. He lives in New York City and Castries, St. Lucia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What the Twilight Says collects Derek Walcott's essays from over twenty years. It includes Walcott's moving and insightful examinations of the paradoxes of Caribbean culture (including his noted Nobel Lecture), and his reckonings of the work and significance of such poets as Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky. Robert Frost, and Ted Hughes and of the novelists V.S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau. The book also contains Walcott's short story "Cafe Martinique," which traces the life of a colonial writer who is trapped in the values of the nineteenth century. What the Twilight Says reveals that Walcott is a writer whose prose has the same lyric power and syncretic intelligence that have made him one of the major poetic voices of our time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine

...[A] densely poetic exploration of one heralded Caribbean writer's musings about other writers — heralded, Caribbean or otherwise.

Publishers Weekly

In essays originally published between 1970 and 1997, Walcott, winner of a Nobel prize in 1992 for his poetry and plays (Omeros, The Bounty), engages with literature, politics and their intersection. This is Walcott's first prose collection but the writing here is so intense that it threatens to disintegrate into lyric; in fact, the pieces deserve to be read aloud for their finely wrought metaphors, their intelligent, conversational observations and the beauty of their sound. Brilliant insights come suddenly, even unexpectedly, as in the aside that "reading [Wallace] Stevens is like having Chocolate for breakfast." Most of the essays are considerations of a wide range of writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Joseph Brodsky and Ernest Hemingway. The remaining few, including the Nobel prize address, "The Antilles: Fragments of an Epic Memory," are intense meditations on the state of West Indian writing and culture. A recurring concern is the relation of the postcolonial writer to the imperial language: Walcott, who now lives in both the United States and his native St. Lucia, describes "barbarian Bards" who "recite long passages of the imperial literature as if it were their own; and with a vigour, even a love, that brings a blush to the civilized cheek." But while he criticizes V.S. Naipaul for turning his back on the West Indies, and praises card-carrying anti-imperialists like C.L.R. James and Aime Cesaire, Walcott is no hard-liner. He is indignant toward those who reject any aspect of the West Indian heritage, whether it be African, Asian, indigenous American or European, acting on his own contention that poetry must not dwell on the scars of history, but should instead embrace the beauty and the possibilities of the present. (Nov.)

Paula Burnett

Walcott is a kingfisher critic, with flashing insights, an original who writes a profound, poetic prose . . . Derek Walcott's words go from strength to strength.
#151;The London Times

Sven Birkets - The New Republic

There is no one writing in English at present who can join power with delicacy the way Walcott can.

Kirkus Reviews

A poet's (poetical) prose about poetry.