drizzle that falls now is American rain,
stitching stars in the sand.
My own corpuscles are changing as fast.
I fear what the migrant envies:
the starry pattern they make -
the flag on the post office
the quality of the dirt,
the fealty changing under my foot.
Derek Walcott
XXVII, Midsummer, 1984
"In 2009 Walcott was a leading candidate for the position of Oxford Professor of Poetry but withdrew his candidancy, after a whispering campaign suddenly brought these two sexual harassment allegations to light.
ReplyDeleteThe position was awarded to Ruth Padel, but she resigned after only 9 days, when her involvement in the smear campaign against Walcott was revealed. Padel's comportment in the affair was roundly criticized by a number of respected poets in a letter of support addressed to Walcott and published in the Times Literary Supplement."
it is appropriate that one post follows another here...
goodbye summer.
B
The crisis over the Poetry Chair was repulsive, but it was quite characteristic of you to discern its relevance to the subject of the last several hours. In fact, allow one to go emphatically, exuberantly further. Significant fragments of the "Collected Poems" (FS&G) are uncannily pertinent to the then-unimagined gay men's health crisis in the United States of the 1980s and 1990s, They were then, and quite clearly remain vitally nourishing and sustaining.
ReplyDeleteIf this blog has an arc, it's my fault when it doesn't tend toward his celebration.