Posts Tagged ‘Derek Walcott’
THE FALL OF ROME, FREE VERSE
In advance of the world premiere of Derek Walcott’s Moon-Child (Ti-Jean in Concert) at the American Academy in Rome last night, I interviewed the author/director, last week, for Sunday’s Il manifesto. A work recast from the earlier Ti-Jean and His Brothers, taking the ballad meter of the conteur, riddled with jokes & calypsolike songs on [...]
WHY WE ARE NOT PAINTERS
“Why wasn’t he?” asks Mr. Walcott when I’m supposed to be interviewing him. “Too chatty, too bloody discursive, in the presence of oranges.” I can’t think of any lines to cite, nervous. Street details. “He was beautiful.” Two remotenesses colliding, the optimism of free 50s poets and painters in which one could fall to a [...]
A ROMAN ELEGY FOR JOSEPH BRODSKY
At the American Academy in Rome, this reader’s latecoming appreciation for a poet arriving to us largely through translation, now discussed in the mouths of his friends, in various vernaculars. Derek Walcott’s appreciation, commuovente, for the confirmed passion and quiet combined of these collective readings across Russian, English and Italian: “This unison would not have [...]