caribbean
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 [...]
VAGABONDAGE OF LANGUAGE (GLISSANT)
“We create our landscapes, we decorate them with our fourail, with the blood that we dream of losing on the plant, and we brush against the delible scar. Then: when our landscape combines cleanly with the lines of a country we suddenly discover to be ours, then (the vow fulfilled, the impatience dried up, the [...]