Volume 47, Number 10 · June 15, 2000
A Frowsty Fragrance
By Derek Walcott
Caribbeana: An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777
edited and with an introduction by Thomas W. Krise
University of Chicago Press, 358 pp., $19.00 (paper)
Subject of poetasters, the Paradisal Isles! Italicized scrolls with f's for s's, whose scripts mimic their vegetation, letters hooked like the beaks of parrots or the coil of an overseer's whip. The Hebrides, the Hesperides, the Cyclades, the Bahamas, all, being islands, have inspired a dipping rhythmic prose and florid verse, the exultations of discovery. These cartographical prints from the past held the excitement of sea battles and private treasures for us as West Indian schoolboys, unfurling to an imagined bristling of parchment with the names of Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd, Anne Bonney, Bluebeard.
Review, 5481 words
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