Buy used: $5.38

FREE delivery September 6 - 11. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by International Book Sales

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Derek Walcott

White Egrets: Poems Hardcover – March 16, 2010

by Derek Walcott (Author)

4.7 43 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$5.38

—

$1.41

Paperback

"Please retry"

$11.36

$8.00

$1.40

Board book

"Please retry"

—

$110.99

$98.99

A DAZZLING NEW COLLECTION FROM ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POETS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In White Egrets, Derek Walcott treats the characteristic subjects of his career--the Caribbean's complex colonial legacy, his love of the Western literary tradition, the wisdom that comes through the passing of time, the always strange joys of new love, and the sometimes terrifying beauty of the natural world--with an intensity and drive that recall his greatest work. Through the mesmerizing repetition of theme and imagery, Walcott creates an almost surflike cadence, broadening the possibilities of rhyme and meter, poetic form and language.

White Egrets is a moving new collection from one of the most important poets of the twentieth century--a celebration of the life and language of the West Indies. It is also a triumphant paean to beauty, love, art, and--perhaps most surprisingly--getting older.

Print length

86 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

March 16, 2010
Dimensions

6 x 0.38 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0374289298
ISBN-13

978-0374289294
See all details

Derek Walcott
229
Paperback
152 offers from $2.40
Derek Walcott
60
Paperback
104 offers from $1.50
Derek Walcott
152
Hardcover
29 offers from $6.18

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Nobel Prize–winner Walcott comes a 14th collection of poems, richly textured in sound and image, and spanning many countries and memories. From his native Caribbean to Italy, Spain, England, the Netherlands, and the United States, Walcott meditates on the passage of time, fallen empires, bygone love affairs, and mortality. Throughout, in metrically complex verses, he writes about the vocation of the poet with a virtuosic ear and a painterly eye (Walcott is also an accomplished watercolor and oil painter): my craft and my craft's thought make parallels/ from every object, the word and the shadow of the word/ makes a thing both itself and something else/ til we are metaphors and not ourselves/ in an empirical language that keeps growing. Walcott describes a wistful search for home in these poems—Silly to think of heritage when there isn't much, he writes—while also expressing deep joy and thanks that he finds his true and permanent home in poetry. This is poetry's weather, he says of a rainy day in Venice, a lovely moment in a beautiful book. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Long, lush, yet battering poems that surge and retract and return like the sea, like breath, are Nobel laureate Walcott’s forte. In his fourteenth collection, he curves this grand form away from the epic and toward the personal, examining the ruins of love and the puzzles of age as he enters his eightieth year. The title poem, punctuated by “stalking egrets” and “clattering parrots” and revved by a tree-tossing storm, is part elegy and part rhapsody and includes this artist’s credo: “The perpetual ideal is astonishment.” That is the state of being Walcott summons as he takes measure of yearning, regrets, and resistance to turmoil, reveling, instead, in the exaltation of earth, sky, and ocean as birds embody feelings and poetry itself. In gorgeous evocations of place––Sicily, Spain, Italy, London, New York, Amsterdam––Walcott writes of the “nausea of absence,” then rejects despair in a startling moment of connection, addressing, “You, my dearest friend, Reader.” His tropes swoop in like birds returning to roost, winged words in jazzy riffs that lift and plunge, flashing light and shadow as Walcott, a not-unscarred literary warrior reports, “I have kept the same furies.” And, looking ahead, “So much to do still, all of it praise.” --Donna Seaman

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition (March 16, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 86 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374289298
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374289294
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.38 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #740,175 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #217 in Caribbean & Latin American Poetry (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.7 43 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

Important information

To report an issue with this product, click here.

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Derek Walcott

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5

43 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

my highest recommendation

Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2010

Verified Purchase

if you ask me to name my favorite poet, without hestitation i would answer derek walcott. any collection of poems by walcott is reason for a personal celebration, White Egrets no less, and in my enthusiasm i would hope that you find in the poems in this book by mr walcott at least some of the pleasure that i do.

when speaking of poetry, there's always talk of the line. one from White Egrets chosen at random:

`hide her face in mist and the barred sun shrivel'

i remove my finger from the page and look up and see the line is from the poem, Epithalamium: The Rainy Season. an epithalamium is a wedding song, and the poem was written `For Stephanos and Heather', a couple who means nothing to me, but who must be very special to mr walcott for him to dedicate a poem to them. their wedding in a rainy season is captured in the one line i selected at random; the mist become veil and the sun shrivel the appearance as the folds created by the drape of the veil, as well as being an allusion to a shakespearean sonnet. any line by walcott would reveal as many gifts. as a reader i am honored to be recipient of his poems, several of them, like White Egrets, for and in memory of his friends, like the joseph of white egrets, his good friend and fellow nobel laureate holder, joseph brodsky.

there's a poem here to president barack obama, Forty Acres, of an engraving:

`Out of the turmoil emerges one emblem, an engraving -
a young Negro at dawn in straw hat and overalls,
an emblem of impossible prophecy: a crowd
dividing like the furrow which a mule has ploughed,
parting for their president; a field of snow-flecked cotton
forty acres wide, of crows with predictable omens
that the young ploughman ignores for his unforgotten
cotton-haired ancestors, ... `

not the american ancestors of mr obama, but the ancestors of a more extended culture, and the direct ancestors of his wife and his daughters who are part of a race who claim him, and he has accepted and claimed as his own through the mingled blood of family.

and there are other poems of travel, reminiscences, old lovers, aging and the feel of the loss of poetic powers, a trope of old men, real and fictional as prospero, a character from one of walcott's favorite shakespearean plays. his poetry remains grounded in the west indian island of his birth and the british island that gave birth to many of the poets of a tradition, problematic to him, which he's honored as one of the tradition's noblest and most distinguished poets.

the couplet he inserts in A London Afternoon:

`but though from court to cottage he depart,
his saint is sure of his unspotted heart'

by the 16th century british poet, george peele, entitled A Farewell to Arms, concludes with the couplet:

`Goddess, allow this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now that was your knight.'

no poet serves, or has served, poetry better, than derek walcott.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kellsie

Great poetry book.

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

Despite its size it delivers quality poetry. Derek Walcott's mastery is unparalleled. The way he brings the world to life is incredible. Sometimes I reread a lone or verse several times just to truly marvel as his command of poetic verse, his form and vivid imagery of the most mundane things at times. A true gift to the literary community.

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2010

Verified Purchase

Perhaps, because I looked so hard through the slapping growth
(for like and kind). Maybe it's caused by any growth made while
the slaps were sent, received, that a sense of the sort
beyond greatness in the work of this very fallible is met.
Mind these not. From your sitting stand, read and decide.
But for me, reading Mr. Walcott here in his humble (however got)
honest, has set revelation lengths ahead of ego its foe,
and caused what is post below.

DRIVING VESSEL

Be a man of projects. - Scribe Ani

In double harness, wonder a plague,
he crossed the threshold of eighty and asked,
three years back in his Sea-Change,
whether he (and at himself he laughed)
would become Superman at seventy-seven.
Body, ship of state to rend and break;
closed for repair, rest, nutrition,
and the ancient's second medicine, exercise
award greatness the wreath and dodge of attack.
Each hand captains their driving vessel,
Nestor in the cart with Diomedes at a hundred.
All who on this eye, mouth planet, walked, stooped,
hewed, and drove from before Abram through
to a fighter in New York or a diver in Japan.
`must do more than when they were young,'

I think of those two Athenians, in (their) Politeias
who quote another:
"When a man no longer has to work for a living,
he should practice excellence."
"Eat less and leap more," Rabelais has
the peasant ass say to the dandy, court horse.
And my own tall sire only gave in when stranded,
garage-less in his Purgatory at eighty,
final sleep coming six to seven years on,
and still more man than many.
A superman at eighty? Life puts legs to it!

© Copyright 2010 (17 April-03 June) Joseph Duvernay

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

B. L. McCartney

A Compelling Read!

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2010

Verified Purchase

In White Egrets his expressions drip with candor. It is clear that he represents the pulse of Caribbean poetry. He speaks so eloquently about his West Indian existence. "There never really was a `we' or `ours' whatever each enjoyed was separate."

In White Egrets he has allowed the reader to travel around the world with him and you move to the rhythm, rhyme of his poetry. White Egrets is soaked in imagery, including the paintings of "Frans, Hals,and Rembrandt." One can metaphorically hear the sounds of this book as his depth details is compelling, original and his observations are sparkling. This book is a composition of varying lengths. He puts his feelings into words as he expresses himself with his own inner voice which for him is a natural beat, as he is unconcerned about the prospect of human opinion or annihilation.

He is an honest poet as he questions his permanent value, he wonders if he has lost his gift of poetry he wonders if his "gift has withered" but one thing he clearly states and concedes in White Egrets is that if he has truly lost his gift he should be grateful. He says "be grateful that you wrote well in this place." I hope this is not his last. White Egrets is a must have for any library and great gift. White Egrets for me is perfection in its raw form, time indeed as inflicted him with wisdom.

Brenda McCartney
[...]

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Barbara Gardner

Painting pictures in words

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 11, 2020

Verified Purchase

This poetry book is full of wonderful poems.
Initially they are not easy because one looks for deep meaning. However these are a old man’s poems that paint in words pictures of his past.
These are poems that need to be read aloud.
The language Walcott uses to craft his poetry lifts you out of drab England and gives you a view of a different , very beautiful world.

Madge Pelling

White Egrets

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 14, 2011

Verified Purchase

Some beautiful poems by a master craftsman that evoke both the natural world of the Caribbean and the fragility of life, whether human or not. Walcott has an easy rhythm and a facility with images, raising plants and birds to the level of universal symbol.
The poems of travel in Europe register new experiences and a different pace of life.
This was a book well worth buying.

2 people found this helpful

Michael James

A marvel

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

A haunting supreme collection by a poet at the end of his life. Wonderfully repeated images.

Jack Houlahan

I like Derek Walcott's poetry

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2016

Verified Purchase

I like Derek Walcott's poetry; such a strong sense of what ties us to the physical world we emerge in and the human community that brings us into being