Walcott`s poetry Essay Example For Students

Walcott`s poetry Essay Welfare scholarship, and in 1951 published the volume Poems. Studying certain poems written by Walcott, we can really realize how colonialism had a strong influence in his life and the world around him. The first and most powerful poem for me is  « Missing the Sea  ». In this poem we are concerned with the lack of something familiar. Because its presence is so missed. The person shows a great deal of confusion In describing his loss, for example the lack of the sound of the sea, in Walkouts mind, Is not really the lack of noise as dark s the lack of light, but an actual sound In Itself an audible silence. In Missing the Sea, the silence takes a very strong part through the way In which Walcott handles Its representation and role. This paradoxical effect -? used as a central theme throughout the poem is the most unique and striking feature of Missing the Sea. The first words of the poem Something removed are already very powerful as the poet is talking about something that is not there anymore, and we can first think about the sound of the sea ; always in the first stanza, we read  « Till reflection lack absence  », we can even interpretative this as his culture being a reflection, Just an impression of something heavily missed. In the following stanza, we see a lot of punctuation used that makes the reader ask himself if the poet wants to give us a sad or happy sensation, but, considering the  « deafening absence  » we can come up with the conclusion that this silence is very upsetting for the narrator. In the next three paragraph ; we can notice that there Is not one single full stop, and It Is rather difficult to follow the situation, but we can also notice the repetition of the word  « dead  » which gives us a feeling of emptiness and of the end of a situation. For poets like Derek Walcott, the beauty of the English language lies in every single word he weaves together. His poem  « A lesson for this Sunday  » explores the resurrecting of a culture and fighting the preconceptions in the culture itself. The usual damage on the colonized is often a turning point of change and the creation of a hybrid identity.  « A lesson for this Sunday  » is a metaphorical text on the morality and behavior of colonizers and those being colonized. The poem focuses on human natures inability o stay pure and the need to bend nature to its will.  « The lesson is the same  » is an extended metaphor throughout the poem to show that human nature believes that bigger and stronger will destroy the weaker simply because they can, because the stronger has the power and the weaker does not. Walkouts poetry By Lorraine Prize in Literature, he was born in Catteries, Saint Lucia, the West Indies, on January 23, 1930. Walcott himself and his family, were part of a minority in his island which this will really have a big impact on the poet s style and poems.