Quote of the World (Derek Walcott, on the Poet Falling ‘In Love With the World, In Spite of History’)

 

“For every poet it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History.”— Saint Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott (1930-2017), “Nobel Prize Lecture,” December 7, 1992

(Picture of Derek Walcott taken at his honorary dinner, Amsterdam, May 20, 2008; permission is granted by Michiel van Kempen, secretary and treasurer of the Werkgroep Caraibische Letteren, The Netherlands; by courtesy of the photographer Bert Nienhuis.)

Quote of the Day (Derek Walcott, With a Sailors’ Song)

“In the middle of the harbor
A fish breaks the Sabbath
With a silvery leap.
The scales fall from him
In a tinkle of church bells;
The town streets are orange
With the week-ripened sunlight,
Balanced on the bowsprit
A young sailor is playing
His grandfather’s chantey
On a trembling mouth organ.”— Saint Lucian poet and playwright—and Nobel Literature laureate—Derek Walcott (1930-2017), “A Sea-Chantey,” in Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

(Picture of Derek Walcott taken at his honorary dinner, Amsterdam, May 20, 2008; permission is granted by Michiel van Kempen, secretary and treasurer of the Werkgroep Caraibische Letteren, The Netherlands; by courtesy of the photographer Bert Nienhuis.)