The Arkansas Testament (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Despite its title, this is another evocation of Walcott's St. Lucia, a Caribbean paradise of whelk-gatherers, sea grapes, and sugar cane where the poet reads "silvery nouns" and deciphers "scriptures of sand." Walcott is again the consummate phrasemaker, describing a night "with white rum on its breath" and a moon "with a birthmark like Gorbachev's head." He includes a sequence of poignant love poems and concludes with the title poem, a painful examination of the visiting black poet's role in an Arkansas where he "was still nothing." In language that is unfailingly fresh and inventive, Walcott reminds us in every poem that a largely unexperienced world exists just "outside the door." Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, Ill.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Walcott's eight collection of poems is divided into two parts -- "There," verse evoking the poet's native Carribbean, and "Elsewhere."

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374520992
• ISBN-13: 978-0374520991
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #104,064 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scintillating and rapturous, November 7, 2004

By	Jason Covell (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I gave this volume to a friend who had no experience of reading poetry (since school, that is), and had asked me what sort of poems he could start with. I pointed out a couple of poems that I thought were highlights, and wished him good luck. When I met up with him a week later, he burst into excited praise for the book. He'd started on the poems I had suggested, and rapidly proceeded to read the whole collection, several times over.
I quite agree with his response - in my early 20s this was one of the books that got me excited in contemporary poets and poetry. While Walcott is not foremost an experimentalist - and he might at odd moments almost be thought a sentimentalist - his sheer joy of craft and wordsmithing is a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold. This book is one of those things that can remind you why life is worth living. It's that good.