The Bounty Poems [Paperback]

The Bountywas the first book of poems Walcott published after winning the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. Opening with the title poem, a memorable elegy to the poet's mother, the book features a haunting series of poems that evoke Walcott's native ground, the island of St. Lucia. For almost forty years his throbbing and relentless lines kept arriving in the English language like tidal waves, Walcott's great contemporary Joseph Brodsky once observed. He gives us more than himself or 'a world'; he gives us a sense of infinity embodied in the language.

Derek Walcott (1930-2017)was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. HisCollected Poems: 1948-1984was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem,Omeros(1990); a collection of verse,The Bounty(1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poemTiepolo's Hound(2000). His numerous plays includeThe Haitian Trilogy(2001) andWalker and The Ghost Dance(2002). Walcott received the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

Walcott is a master of . . . easy, careless abundance. William Logan, The New York Times Book Review

A prime aged Porterhouse steak, four times as thick as this slim volume, [could] not match the rich density of this new collection, the Nobel laureate's first since his epicOmeros. Walcott's lines are marbled with imagery worth savoring on the tongue before swallowing: 'burnt sheaves of tall corn / shriven and bearded in chorus.' He forges a connection between the human heart and the earth that is reminiscent of the best Irish poetry. But the potatoes are supplanted by breadfruit, and the ache of a farmer's sacrifice to a historic land is replaced by a frequent flyer's knowledge that the soil of Poland and Parang, Spain and Boston, can all bury the bodies of loved ones or grow rich and dark with memory. Publishers Weekly