Derek Walcott’s Sea Grapes – 1
You can find the text of Sea Grapes at
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1992/walcott-poetry-seagrapes.html
What a wonderful poem it is. It leapt off the page when I reached it in Walcott’s Collected Poems 1948 – 1984. My immediate feeling was that this was the most arrestingly alive and intellectually engaging poem in the volume so far.
What makes it come alive and stay alive so vividly? For me it was first of all that wonderful opening image, the way literal and metaphorical suggestions both played into and clashed with each other. The six words of the first line do so much. The use of “That” gives … Continue Reading