The Prodigal: A Poem

The Prodigal by Derek Walcott is a short epic poem that moves across the geography of the mind as the poet takes the reader on a journey through various continents. The poem travels with a musicality that stretches the line with the sounds of place as Walcott weighs home in Manhattan and the Hudson River with his home at St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Artists, rivers, refugees,a Columbian woman soldier, the wandering poet stamp the passport of the eyes, absorbed in the fresco of color that Walcott paints with words. Nature and history form a mythic union as the Prodigal takes the reader on his "untethered pilgrimage."

GOOD SELLER book as described

Excellent. It reads like poetic memoir. His use of language and Imagery is wonderful. For me it was obvious that he was hearing music from his homeland when writing these poems

Wonderful!!

"The Prodigal" is a travelogue with a difference. Written in blank verse (bordering on free verse), Walcott's wanderings are viewed through a very personal lens that reveals less about the places per se, but more about his internal landscape as he moves forwards and backwards to review memories and experiences. In a sense it enriches the sense of place because he invest it with so much meaning and insight.The poem is structured in 3 parts. From New York to the Swiss Alps to Milan, to Pescara in the first part, he travels to Latin America in the second part, moving ever closer to home, St Lucia in the Caribbean, which he returns to in the third part. Walcott lapses into third person at will, as if indicate the immediacy of moment-by-moment experience - the Walcott who experiences the scenery is not the Walcott who records it down in poetry as the experience is passed even as he writes it down on hindsight.The trajectory of his journey may be unconscious, but like a true prodigal, the return to homeland is sweetened by his being away:'This bedraggled backyard, this unfulfilled lot,this little field of leaves, brittle and fallen,of all the cities of the world, this is your centre.Oh to be luminous and exact!' (p.84)It is interesting to note that while a longing for home draws him ever closer to St Lucia, he nonetheless claims a universal sort of citizenship that is not bound by geography in the following lines:'...and if they askedwhat country I was from I'd say, "The lightof that tree-lined sunrise down the Via Veneto."' (p.29)Home is also where he is.

Walcott is one of the most underrated poets that is world class. He can twist language to do acrobatics or tame it to sit with reverence on the page. I recommend any of his poetry books.

In the "Prodigal", the noble poet luareate, Walcott proves againhe is a man of humble proportion with grand perspective. This landscape of memory lives in poignant hues. His flock of commas soar across stanzas of history. In the color nuiance, he bares his painted soul, so we may grow.

Walcott shows-off his sense of place, time, and ambiance drawing out every relvent part of the journey with a surgeons accuracy -