Communication Images in Derek Walcott's Poetry

Sadia Gill

• Publisher: Vernon Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781622732708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Poetry
• Index: Literature

This book investigates the potential purpose of recurrent communication images in the poetry of Derek Walcott. The recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992, Walcott is one of the most important postcolonial poets of the 20th century. His poetry delves into the dynamics of Caribbean marginalization and seeks to safeguard the paradigms characteristic of his island home. Several major studies have examined themes in his poetry but the images of communication in his poetics have not been explored. This book examines Walcott’s poetry expressions that the poet brings into play in order to demonstrate the relevance of the Caribbean in the contemporary world—firstly through a study of communication imagery, and secondly through an examination of the conclusions he reaches through these means. The quantitative chart demonstrates that Walcott is especially reliant upon images of communication from the 1980s. Extensive textual analysis indicates that the place and contextual meaning of communication imagery, for example, page mirrors the historical plight of the Caribbean region; likewise, line expresses an identity deficit. Finally, this book validates that Walcott’s extensive use of communication imagery in his poetry contributes to a fluid notion of self that embraces multiculturalism while maintaining the imaginary intact.

Chapter 1
“Blank pages turn in the wind”⁷ - Images of writing
(page, paper, pen)

Introduction      

Page, paper, and pen are the articles used for writing. They essentially communicate thoughts and visions in a verbal structure. This chapter investigates three images of communication in the hypernym of writing (given here with their frequencies)—page (148), paper (81), and pen (54). Images of writing in Walcott’s poetry create a communication pattern through which he makes an effort to endorse cosmopolitanism. As a postimperial poet, he traverses these images of writing, which appear to help him deliver his notions on history, the Caribbean, identity and travel. The theories applied in this chapter to understand the images of writing are communication, postcolonial, and ecopoetry. The theory of communication defines communication as a “semiotic process” in which individuals make an effort to strive for a stable “and even shared view” (Sell 3). Sharing is perhaps another distinct possibility for why Walcott continues to opt for communication imagery in his poetry.

The challenges of postcolonial literature in the colonized region are based on the tie “between imported European and local” and also “between language and place” (Ashcroft et al. 144). Postcolonial writers who belong to the ex-colonized regions encounter trials based upon the relation between the two different worlds, centered on diverse cultures, languages, and social elements. Walcott’s verse scrutinizes the tug-of-war between the colonial region and the native one, and in turn captures the multiculturality of his postimperial land. The theory of ecopoetry analyses a bond between nature and humans that “reports emotions of it from the inside” (Bach 111). Writers from postimperial countries additionally engage in accentuating the inner emotions of their people and landscapes as both have been wounded either by imperialism or by its extended version in the disguise of development in this era. Walcott’s poetry is quite ecopoetic as he concentrates on the tribulations of his land brought by human activities both during and after imperialism, and tries to protect nature in his land to keep the imagination intact. He knows that memory is wounded; therefore, he desires to rectify it with his imagination and evinces it graphically via images of writing in his verse. Perhaps he engages these images for evocative purposes to convey his chief thoughts for the benefit of the reader’s sensibility and psyche. This chapter inspects and answers the following research questions:

1. What are Walcott’s overall intentions in using images of writing?

2. Why is page often associated with blankness?

3. Why are negative connotations constantly attached to paper?

4. Why is pen characteristically given living attributes?

The trends in supporting examples are:

Themes	Page	Paper	Pen
History	22	8	4
Caribbean	8	0	0
Identity	14	5	13
Travel	5	0	0

Hyponym 1: Page

The importance of page in the context of emptiness is researched in this hyponym. For Walcott, “the world is always a page,” henceforth the “only heroism lies” in poetry (Mason). The poet uses this image to represent different dimensions of history. Page also facilitates the lack of native literature, life as a journey, and Europe as the center of industrialization.

Page History

Main example

Clouds, log of Colon,

I learnt your annals of ocean,

Of Hector, bridler of horses,

Achilles, Aenéas, Ulysses,

But “Of that fine race of people which came off the mainland

To greet Christobal as rounded Icacos,”

Blank pages turn in the wind.

They possessed, by Bulbrook,

“No knowledge whatever of metals, not even of gold,

They recognized the seasons (CP 11)

One of the most habitually applied images of writing, page facilitates the depiction of Walcott’s views on the troubled history. While researching page in relation to these lines, one comes to know that the poem Origin is based on Walcott’s unpublished poem “Africa, Patria Mia” (King 110). The poet is troubled by an outsider’s perception of the value of the natives’ knowledge since, upon being assigned to excavate the island of Trinidad, English archaeologist John Albert Bulbrook believed that the natives had no knowledge of their valuable natural resources, though they could comprehend the seasonal cycles. In this scenario, page stands for history and origin, and by relating it to the adjective “blank” it signifies the hollow sector of history brought by colonizers’ exploitation of the natives and their land. Symbolically, the use of the “blank page” and connecting it with “turn in the wind” indicates the unwritten history of the natives, as the colonizers plunder the islands’ natural resources, virtually leaving them empty. Visually, page represents ships’ sails as the turning of pages connotes ships sailing, and aurally the sound of turning pages relates to the sound of a ship sailing. It may also allude to there being fewer significant pages that can be easily moved away by the wind. Walcott seems to have a direct conversation with the colonizer, and the main speaker appears to be the poet, and the other is the voice of the colonizer. One notices in Northern Irish Poetry: The American Connection that the colonizers’ culture has always been recorded, unlike that of the natives’ history, which stays as “blank pages”—therefore, in the “European texts” in fact “the native is spoken for by others” (Kennedy-Andrews 83). Hence, the image “blank pages” attests to the undocumented natives’ history. Moreover, whatever is documented is through the European lens, which results in the marginalization of the natives. Walcott learns from his colonial education that “a gap” exists due to missing native history (Tynan 9), and the poet applies page to present this gulf. He desires to bridge this divide by constructing a pattern of images that can communicate a unified definition of history. In Epic of the Dispossessed: Derek Walcott's Omeros, these lines evoke a type of “racial memory” and present the lack of a Caribbean model, which does not bother him because he does not feel that he writes within a void (Hamner 23). Despite acutely acknowledging the vacuum in the history of his people, Walcott is able to cultivate his verse without being overshadowed by it. I believe this is one of the strongest reasons the postcolonial mind can be watered through Walcottain verse—its prosaic positivity and fertility can mend dehydrated mental states.

Jamie Olson’s view is understandable—that is, “Cristóbal Colón” is credited to “Christopher Columbus,” “log” to Columbus’s journals, and “annals” to “European history and literature, and that in addition the poet makes a “dialogue with Europe” on the “basis” of “literature,” which sounds contradictory as the Caribbean is devoid of any literature (119). Through painting page, Walcott tries to fill the blankness in the Caribbean, and to internalize it as a part of the West Indian literature. One can appreciate the half rhymes, “colon” and “ocean”, “horses” and “Ulysses” as the ending consonant sounds rhyme and the preceding vowels have different sounds. This device could be linked to colonization in the sense that the poet depicts a clash of cultures, and the fact that the end words only half rhyme, symbolizes the imperfect communication between the natives and the colonizers. In a word, his message is multilayered because he graphically sketches it so that his readers can easily retain it in their memory. If communication is a “semiotic process” of message transference (Sell 3), it seems to be at work in Walcott’s hand, as he presents page in its blankness and perhaps inscribes a customized version of history to fill this void. Maybe, he opts to use the domain of writing specifically, and communication in general, to provide a balanced view in order to direct the Caribbeans towards a unifying concept of their history.

Supporting examples

Walcott in The Prodigal applies page to highlight agitation on the historical troubles. Firstly, page is amalgamated with the tension of waves: “a rising sea in wind, the spinning pages / of remorseful texts, Bligh’s log and cannonballs” (TP 84). Page presents a visual image of the turbulent sea, a maelstrom or whirlpool in fact, which carries connotations of fusion and disorientation, and symbolizes colonialism. At the same time, page ascribes to Bligh’s documentation of the munity in his ship as his protégé expels him. Secondly, page is appended to distressed native history such as: “a bird flock halted, / as wind spins their pages backwards into spray.” (TP 91). The word “spray” is often joined with turbulent weather. Since it is tied to a flock of birds, it is likely to be sea spray, and it represents the turbulence of Caribbean history. The idea of pages being spun backwards into the spray could be suggestive of history repeating itself, or alternatively, it could be alluding to the importance of revisiting history, so that it is not lost forever. Finally, page manifests the division of the Caribbean in this example: “walking along its flag-flapping streets / a figure in white fog dividing this page” (TP 97). This Caribbean split is due to “white” colonization, and the use of alliteration and fricative sounds in “flag-flapping streets” reckons a tone of agitation and restlessness that he experiences when he sees the “fog,” another sign of colonization. On the one hand, the act of walking, and on the other, flapping, reiterates the tautness of the colonized situation.

Page blueprints various angles of imperialism in The Bounty. It evinces lack of history such as: “still as the white wastes of that prison / like pages erased by a regime.” (TB 64). The word “white” is used ambiguously, and here it is not necessarily interconnected to a racial reference; it is more likely a cataphoric reference to pages. The interconnection between page and “white wastes” is interesting, as it suggests the futility of pages that have been “erased” or wiped clean of writing. This suggests that the written word is an extremely powerful tool. The use of the temporal adverb “still” suggests “subtle and unobtrusive rel...

Table of contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction “I open their books”
• Research questions
• Chapter 1 “Blank pages turn in the wind” - Images of writing (page, paper, pen)
• Hyponym 1: Page
• Images of writing sketches
• Chapter 2 “Fiction in a fiction” - Images of narrative (fiction, book, prose, read/ reading)
• Hyponym 2: Book
• Images of narrative sketches
• Chapter 3 “Sunlit stanza” - Images of poetics (poetry, poem, rhyme, rhythm, stanza, meter, line)
• Images of poetics sketches
• Chapter 4 “This brightening noun” - Images of language and vocabulary (language, speech, dialect, vowel, word, noun)
• Images of language and vocabulary sketches
• Chapter 5 “Hyphenating horizons” - Images of grammar and punctuation (syntax, phrase, sentence, parenthesis/ parentheses, hyphen, question)
• Images of grammar and punctuation sketches
• Conclusion “It goes white again and the book comes to a close”
• Primary sources of Walcott’s poetry
• Bibliography
• Appendix: Graphs
• Index