SOURCE: Adams, Rolstan. “Wilson Harris: The Pre-Novel Poet.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 13, no. 3 (April 1979): 71–85.

In the following essay, Adams argues that Harris's early poetry acts as a key to understanding the images, themes, structures, and characters of his later novels.

Between 1951 and 1955 Wilson Harris published three collections of poetry which, when closely scrutinized, provide a critic's best insights into the images, structures, and characters of Harris's novels published later. That there is a distinct thematic thread running through the poetry into the novels is little in doubt. And perhaps the most rewarding aspect of Harris's poetry is the imaginative process which is revealed in his development as a major prose-writer of the Caribbean. The collections of poetry are entitled Fetish (1951), Eternity to Season: Poems of Separation and Reunion (1954), and The Sun: Fourteen Poems in a Cycle (1955). The first two appeared under their own titles from the Georgetown Lithographic...