In the past decade, Derek Walcott has established himself as one of the very best English poets. The Star-Apple Kingdom enhances that reputation.

Walcott's special strength … is in the narrative, which depends on an accumulation of effects. Shifting from island patois to burlap idiom to eloquent statement, Walcott follows the miracles of the Caribbean and other "forlorn stations," achieving a respect for and harmony with nature. Even when he means to be strident, as with his description of a mysterious woman as "a black umbrella blown inside out / by the wind of revolution," he assumes a classical stance, Elizabethan airs. Not that archaism or direct influence are involved. Rather a particular skill and emotion has survived the centuries and found in Walcott an exceptional modern-day host.

G. E. Murray, "Six Poets," in The Nation (copyright 1979 by the Nation Associates, Inc.), Vol. 228, No. 19, May 19, 1979, pp. 578, 580.∗