Omeros

Derek Walcott

$19.00

Publication Date: June 1st, 1992

Publisher:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN:

9780374523503

Pages:

336

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Description

A Masterpiece of Modern Epic Poetry

Dive into the poignant verses of Omeros, a grand opus of epic poetry penned by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. Told in multiple chapters and tracing two currents of history, this work offers an immersive blend of historic account and personal sentiment.

Titled with the Greek name for Homer, Omeros elegantly traverses the surface and depths of history. While wrapping you in the intricacies of Caribbean literature and Latin American poetry, the verses of Omeros take you on an emotional journey through Saint Lucian landscapes.

Celebrate the spirit of this significant contribution to Caribbean poetry and St. Lucian literature while unraveling the complex themes of 20th-century poetry, including slavery, Native American history, and more.

“One of the great poems of our time.” —John Lucas, New Statesman

About the Author

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo's Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Praise for Omeros

“No poet rivals Mr. Walcott in humor, emotional depth, lavish inventiveness in language, or the ability to express the thoughts of his characters and compel the reader to follow the swift mutations of ideas and images in their minds. This wonderful story moves in a spiral, replicating human thought, and in the end, surprisingly, it makes us realize that history, all of it, belongs to us.” —Mary Lefkowitz, The New York Times Book Review (an Editors' Choice/Best Book of 1990 selection)

“Characters come fully and movingly to life in Walcott's hands; black and white are treated with equal understanding and sympathy as they go their complicated ways . . . Wit and verbal play . . . enliven every page of this extraordinary poem . . . A constant source of surprise and delight from stanza to stanza, a music so subtle, so varied, so exquisitely right that it never once, in more than eight thousand lines, strikes a false note.” —Bernard Knox, The New York Review of Books

“One of the great poems of our time.” —John Lucas, New Statesman and Society