Omeros

Rating:
Summary: what you read is true
Review: My review title shouldn't be construed as me claiming any knowledge re: Caribbean culture/history, or indeed -any- of the experiences of the disenfranchised peoples this book touches on. All I can say is that the glowing reviews here on Amazon are accurate. Walcott's poetry is supple almost beyond belief: so facile and brilliant that it would stand between the reader and the subject if Walcott himself didn't admit that, yes, he can be awfully facile and brilliant with the English language! The writer walks a dozen dangerous lines - among them, the could-be-precious placing of himself in his own poem - and walks away triumphant from every single challenge.

If you are looking for a linear "story" in the tradition of Homer but transplanted to a Caribbean locale, this isn't it. If however you are looking for great poetry and the understanding of others (and yourself) that great poetry can bring, then it is right here. OMEROS is eminently worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Walcott's Omeros
Review: Omeros ! A treat for the lover of language. Much has been and will be written of this literary challenge : plot, characters, and segueing epic; but little will ever do justice to the heart of the matter,- ( which demands this conscious encomium.)

What for Habermas is the ideal of communicative action is celebrated in Walcott as the action of poetic communication. Walcott paints.

On every page, he offers the reader a life time of disciplined observation - the fruit of which he dispenses with prodigal largesse.

This humble, almost unconscious master of metaphor is able to enter unerringly into the consciousness of things and to emerge from that dive with pearls, whose inner flower-flames he unfurls or explodes in liquid light for the benefit of all.

One wishes that Omeros had remained faithful to its native soil - the simple wisdom of Aristotelian unity. The manifold may well be too vast and seems to dilute the poetic distillation. ( Though the genre itself and Walcott's coupled ethnicity exculpate, one still wishes ...etc.)

The work is all done in and as an act of love; still, a brochetting irk pensiles in the mind :
How can a love so in love with its art and the art of its art be anything but artful.

Anticipating the critics who - like he says elsewhere - would spaniel after him like an old stag to hang their theses on the exclamations of his antlers, Walcott may well have an answer to this and other squibs. His arrowing sea-swift Omeros veers and scales with extra territorial sui generis facticity.

The rich pyrotechnics of his fractaling passion, is, like a flung star, a challenge to young energetic poets like Colin Carberry of Ireland , Kendel Hippolyte and Mc.Donald Dixon from the Islands.

Omeros should hold a prominent place on every bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Walcott's Omeros
Review: Omeros ! A treat for the lover of language. Much has been and will be written of this literary challenge : plot, characters, and segueing epic; but little will ever do justice to the heart of the matter,- ( which demands this conscious encomium.)

What for Habermas is the ideal of communicative action is celebrated in Walcott as the action of poetic communication. Walcott paints.

On every page, he offers the reader a life time of disciplined observation - the fruit of which he dispenses with prodigal largesse.

This humble, almost unconscious master of metaphor is able to enter unerringly into the consciousness of things and to emerge from that dive with pearls, whose inner flower-flames he unfurls or explodes in liquid light for the benefit of all.

One wishes that Omeros had remained faithful to its native soil - the simple wisdom of Aristotelian unity. The manifold may well be too vast and seems to dilute the poetic distillation. ( Though the genre itself and Walcott's coupled ethnicity exculpate, one still wishes ...etc.)

The work is all done in and as an act of love; still, a brochetting irk pensiles in the mind :
How can a love so in love with its art and the art of its art be anything but artful.

Anticipating the critics who - like he says elsewhere - would spaniel after him like an old stag to hang their theses on the exclamations of his antlers, Walcott may well have an answer to this and other squibs. His arrowing sea-swift Omeros veers and scales with extra territorial sui generis facticity.

The rich pyrotechnics of his fractaling passion, is, like a flung star, a challenge to young energetic poets like Colin Carberry of Ireland , Kendel Hippolyte and Mc.Donald Dixon from the Islands.

Omeros should hold a prominent place on every bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book can boast of a multitude of layers and references, fine-meshed networks of imagery and metaphor, symbols and emblems, a true odyssee through all major works of world literature, a revocation of the great literary masters from Homer to Whitman. At the same time this truely magnificent verse epos maintains its "readability", there are so many levels on which to appreciate its composition: There is the masterful rhythm of Walcott's verse, rolling to and fro like the neverending sea, there are full fleshed "round" characters, black and white, former slaves and former colonial masters, all part of Walcott's personal history (or his story, as Major Plunkett, one of the key characters, would pun) that he revisits physically and spriritually in the persona of Achilles, the proud fisherman, Plunkett, the colonial cast-away, and a fictitious "I", an author outwardly not unlike Walcott. One of his many themes is that of belonging, of mimicry and identity, covered in episodes about the North American Indians and African forefathers, brutally caught and shipped under sub-human circumstances to the colonies for exploitation. Echoing the great antique tragedies in the characters of "plain" fishermen and pensioners make these accessible for modern readers, providing the "human touch" that the tales of Olympians fail to transmit -- I personally was emotionally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the quiet individual tragedies, pain and redemption that Walcott's characters are subjected to.

Rating:
Summary: Postcolonial Homer
Review: Walcott confidently feels his way into epic form, borrowing the blind eyes of Homer and tropes from Homer's tales. Jam-packed with craft, OMEROS' Dantesque tercets make hairpin turns on the pinpoints of vowels and consonants. Walcott is nothing if not evocative, calling forth the spirits of breadfruit, waves, Plains Indians, sunken treasure, sea creatures and all his other muses with a music that is beyond sounds.

For all the great poetry, what fans of the modern epic will miss in OMEROS is a narrative through-line. Structurally, it is more like William Carlos Williams' PATERSON or especially Hart Crane's THE BRIDGE, than like THE ILLIAD or THE ODYSSEY. The stories in the poem are given secondary importance to the ideas. While I will not disagree with other reviewers' characterizations of the characters as 'well-developed,' I will say that Walcott gives his characters very little to do. The greatest journey is the one taken by the un-named narrator (who seems to be prowling the University Poet circuit from the Carribean to the U.S. to England). Those who want a story with their modern epic are directed to THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER by James Merrill.

What Walcott offers in place of narrative is recollections, meditations and essays on a post-colonial world. Certain human motifs are bound to repeat, he says, and demonstrates with the story of fishermen Hector and Achille fighting for the island girl in the yellow dress, Helen. To me, Omeros is really a collection of poems in a similar form spiralling around similar themes, taking up each others' melodies in different keys. Like any symphony, it sometimes gets lost. But its individual passages are, more often than not, magnificent -- and beautiful to hear.

Rating:
Summary: Postcolonial Homer
Review: Walcott confidently feels his way into epic form, borrowing the blind eyes of Homer and tropes from Homer's tales. Jam-packed with craft, OMEROS' Dantesque tercets make hairpin turns on the pinpoints of vowels and consonants. Walcott is nothing if not evocative, calling forth the spirits of breadfruit, waves, Plains Indians, sunken treasure, sea creatures and all his other muses with a music that is beyond sounds.

For all the great poetry, what fans of the modern epic will miss in OMEROS is a narrative through-line. Structurally, it is more like William Carlos Williams' PATERSON or especially Hart Crane's THE BRIDGE, than like THE ILLIAD or THE ODYSSEY. The stories in the poem are given secondary importance to the ideas. While I will not disagree with other reviewers' characterizations of the characters as 'well-developed,' I will say that Walcott gives his characters very little to do. The greatest journey is the one taken by the un-named narrator (who seems to be prowling the University Poet circuit from the Carribean to the U.S. to England). Those who want a story with their modern epic are directed to THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER by James Merrill.

What Walcott offers in place of narrative is recollections, meditations and essays on a post-colonial world. Certain human motifs are bound to repeat, he says, and demonstrates with the story of fishermen Hector and Achille fighting for the island girl in the yellow dress, Helen. To me, Omeros is really a collection of poems in a similar form spiralling around similar themes, taking up each others' melodies in different keys. Like any symphony, it sometimes gets lost. But its individual passages are, more often than not, magnificent -- and beautiful to hear.

Rating:
Summary: You Want Me to Read an Epic?
Review: When I was given this to read - I said, "WHOA!"

I rolled through this poem and its circular themes and its secrets and symbols - tremendous and sad.

Give it a try - be patient.

Rating:
Summary: The worst poem it has ever been my fire's misfortune to burn
Review: Why is it not possible to bestow 0 stars upon an item? I cannot express deeply enough how horrible this 320-some-odd-page poem is. It is the longest complaint I have ever had to trudge through. That is all it is. One long list of complaints. All the narrator does throughout the piece is whine about the same things. A repetative compliation of meaningless and monotonous rants about where he belongs in life, and what makes them so tedious is the fact that you can never relate to the man, so there is no way to feel remorse. I will admit that there are some eloquent descriptions and very mild humour, but it is not enough to save this tragically wordy, muddled, vague, boring, unoriginal, god-please-take-me-now tribute to an overrated classics writer. Save yourself the long nights and headaches....Stay far, far away!