Selected Poems, Derek Walcott; Edited by Edward Baugh

Drawing from every stage of his career, Derek Walcotts Selected Poems brings together famous pieces from his early volumes, including A Far Cry from Africa and A Citys Death by Fire, with passages from the celebrated Omeros and selections from his latest major works, which extend his contributions to reenergizing the contemporary long poem. Here we find all of Walcotts essential themes, from grappling with the Caribbeans colonial legacy to his conflicted love of home and of Western literary tradition; from the wisdom-making pain of time and mortality to the strange wonder of love, the natural world, and what it means to be human. We see his lifelong labor at poetic crafts, his broadening of the possibilities of rhyme and meter, stanza forms, language, and metaphor. Edited and with an introduction by the Jamaican poet and critic Edward Baugh, this volume is a perfect representation of Walcotts breadth of work, spanning almost half a century.