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Derek Walcott. What the Twilight Says. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1998. 245 pages. $23. ISBN 0-374-28841-0.
Derek Walcott, the 1992 Nobel laureate from St. Lucia (see WLT 67:2, pp. 261-76), is arguably the
preeminent poet in the English language. This celebrated winner of numerous awards for poetry turns out to be an excellent critic in the collection of essays, reviews, and one story titled What the Twilight Says. All these previously published pieces reflecting twenty-seven years (1970-97) of critical study have been grouped into three sections.
The first section contains the title piece, "What the Twilight Says," which encapsulates Walcott's conception of the postcolonial or New World, as he calls it. The inheritance of the Caribbean man, he says, is both African and European. He cannot go back to Africa, and he cannot be European or "white," so he must become a new man who will create literature from the fusion of African and European heritages. Walcott...