SOURCE: Pettingell, Phoebe. “Breadfruit, Bach, and Kafka.” New Leader 80, no. 14 (8 September 1997): 13–14.

In the following review, Pettingell offers a positive assessment of The Bounty.

Derek Walcott established himself as the Homer of the West Indies in 1990 with Omeros, his Caribbean retelling of The Odyssey. The epic poem describes and reflects on his native island, St. Lucia, where Caribs, African slaves and colonial Europeans created a multilayered society. It earned him the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Walcott, who now divides his time between New York and St. Lucia, feels at home with the literary traditions of Europe and America, as well as the various folk materials and songs of his own culture. His latest book, The Bounty, is an elegiac collection of lyrics, beginning with a combined tribute to his late mother and to the mad English Romantic poet John Clare. But his deepest nostalgia is reserved for memories of...