Derek Walcott: Collected Poems Literary Elements

The speaker in many of Walcott's poems is a person of mixed St. Lucian origin, striving to find a place despite their complicated history and the legacy of colonialism.

All of the Walcott poems in this guide are free verse, without a set form or meter.

In the first stanza of "Names," the speaker compares his race to the sea in order to emphasize their boundlessness and the way they once saw the world from the perspective of looking up to the heavens and down to the earth, rather than across to compare themselves with other nations and peoples.

In line 16 of "Names," Walcott uses simile to compare the horizon to a sinking fishline.

In line 24 of "Names," Walcott uses simile to compare the beginning of his race to the cry of an osprey.

In lines 28-29 of "Names," Walcott uses simile to compare the sky to history, and history to a fish caught on a fishline.

In lines 49-52 of "Names," Walcott uses metaphor to compare the Europeans' bitterness to sour apples, green grapes, and acid.

Much of section 2 of "Names" rests around a visual metaphor between palm trees and columns.

The final line of "Names" is a metaphor between stars and fireflies caught in molasses.

The first stanza of "Ruins of a Great House" uses metaphor to compare the house to a corpse.

In line 13 of "Ruins of a Great House," Walcott uses simile to compare the marble of the great house to Homer's Greece and Faulkner's South.

In line 6 of "Becune Point," Walcott compares the sharp leaves of agave plants to daggers protecting the island from invaders.

Lines 29-30 of "Becune Point" use metaphor to compare the sky to the roof of a great building, but the poem goes on to reject this comparison in favor of appreciating the empty sky for its own sake.

The final couplet of "Becune Point" uses simile to compare the roots of the earth to those of the acacia plant.

"Map of the New World" begins with a metaphor that compares the poem to a ship at sea.

In line 10 of "Map of the New World," Walcott uses simile to compare streaks of rain to the strings of a harp.

In line 19 of "Map of the New World" Walcott uses metaphor to compare the inlet to a furnace.

"Have we melted into a mirror..." ("Names" 18), alliteration of /m/

"Behind us all the sky folded/as history folds over a fishline,/and the foam foreclosed" ("Names" 28-30), alliteration of /f/

"charred candelabra of coca" ("Names" 57), alliteration of /c/

"the coal of my compassion" ("Ruins of a Great House" 43), alliteration of /c/

In "Names," the Caribbean people have European language forced on them, but ironically are able to use that language to reclaim their land by transforming the colonial names and reimagining them in the context of their own perceptions of the world.

Lyric poetry

"Names," "Ruins of a Great House," and "Becune Point" are all set on St. Lucia. "Becune Point" is set at sea, and "Love After Love" is set in a home.

"Names," "Becune Point," "Becune Point," and "Love After Love" are all hopeful, because they depict the possibility of finding identity, regaining a relationship with the natural world, and remembering oneself. "Ruins of a Great House" is more conflicted; at times it is nostalgic, at others angry.

The protagonist of "Names" is the Caribbean people, the antagonist is the colonizer. In "Becune Point," "Ruins of a Great House," and "Map of the New World," the speaker is also the protagonist, but the antagonist is less clear—the speaker's conflict is with himself, but that conflict is informed by the history of colonialism. Similarly, in "Love After Love" the addressee is both the protagonist and antagonist: his conflict is with himself, and his rejection of who he really is.

The major conflict in "Names," "Becune Point," "Ruins of a Great House," and "Map of the New World" is between colonial ways of understanding the world, and the attempts of the Caribbean people to define themselves and their land. The major conflict in "Love After Love" is "man against himself": the enemy of the addressee is his own ability to forget who he really is.

The climax of "Names" occurs in the twelfth stanza, where the speaker tells the Caribbean children to use their own voices to transform and claim the imposed European languages.

The climax of "Ruins of a Great House" is the last stanza, where the speaker's rage at the empire and his feeling of compassion towards the poetry of the Western canon clash.

The climax of "Becune Point" comes when the speaker realizes that the artwork of the Vatican only lessened his faith, and hence that, by rejecting his associations with Western artwork, he can see St. Lucia more clearly while also feeling a deeper sense of belief.

The climax of "Love After Love" is the second-to-last stanza, where the speaker tells the addressee that in order to really come back to themself, they need to take down all the things they love and bring them into their body.

The climax of "Map of the New World" is when "Sea Cranes" introduces the idea that poetry might not survive if it doesn't have the right inspirations. The stakes of the speaker's journey become the survival of poetry itself.

In "Ruins of a Great House," Kipling's anticipation of the "death of a great empire" foreshadows the collapse of the British empire.

The most important allusion in "Ruins of a Great House" is to John Donne's poem "No Man is an Island." The poem also alludes to Kipling and Faulkner, two authors who wrote from within systems of empire and racial segregation about the approaching end of these violent forms of power.

"Love After Love" likely alludes to the poem "Love (3)" by the early modern religious poet George Herbert, which has a similar ending line, but is about the relationship between the self and God.

"Map of the New World" alludes to the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as the British legend of Tristan and Isolde.

In the first stanza of "Names," the singular speaker "with pebbles under my tongue" stands in for the whole collective race.

In line 13 of "Ruins of a Great House," "marble" stands in for the great house as a whole.