Everything you need to understand or teach
Edward Kamau Brathwaite.
Products may contain comprehensive summaries, analysis, notes, articles, essays,
lesson plans and more. See below for details on what is included.
Biography EssayWithin the English-speaking Caribbean, Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely regarded as the most important West Indian poet, though his work is not so well known abroad as that of Derek Wa...
Read more
Within the English-speaking Caribbean, Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely regarded as the most important West Indian poet, though his work is not so well known abroad as that of Derek Walcott. Brathwai...
Read more
Critical Essay by Julian Symons
[Brathwaite's] poems are about typical West Indian experiences of life in [the West Indies, England, America, and Ghana], and they are written in a free slangy l...
Read more
Critical Essay by Lewis Turco
[Rights of Passage] is the first part of a poem titled "Masks."… "Masks" would appear to be an epic-length work of the sort established...
Read more
Critical Essay by Laurence Lieberman
[In Masks Edward Brathwaite] has been able to invent a hybrid prosody which, combining jazz/folk rhythms with English-speaking meters, captures the authenticity of...
Read more
Critical Essay by Hayden Carruth
To convey a sense of the quality of Edward Brathwaite's poetry is difficult. Let me suggest a distinction between poetry that is moving and poetry that is stirr...
Read more
In the following essay, the author compares Brathwaite to Virgil and focuses on themes of exile.
It is significant that before Brathwaite the poet comes Brathwaite the historian. Only a historian coul...
Read more
In the following essay, Reiss links the structure of Brathwaite's poetry to seventeenth-century England by positing that the poet's work often has an underlying structure derived from ia...
Read more
In the following essay, the author claims that Brathwaite views himself through the Modernist assumption of the poet as divine interpreter, an individual with the power to give one voice to multiple i...
Read more
In the following essay, a poet praises The Arrivants as “a major document of African reconnection” that “draws attention to Caribbean continuities out of Africa.”
Of the ma...
Read more
In the following essay, examples of the Caribbean language, religion, and culture are teased out of Brathwaite's poems, leading to the conclusion that “Brathwaite insists on a theory of ...
Read more
In the following essay, Pollard examines the allusions and rhythms of Brathwaite poems that depict women as rescuers.
Francina
He chooses Francina, a simple woman. She who “used to scale / fish...
Read more
In the following essay, the author looks back at The Arrivants, in which one can detect “subtle displacements and perturbations caused by the gravitational tug of the author's academic d...
Read more
In the following essay, Ismond revisits and reconsiders a once-common comparison between Brathwaite and Derek Walcott. She finds Walcott by far the better craftsman.
Since Edward Lucie-Smith's ...
Read more
In the following essay, Brown traces a communal voice through Brathwaite's collections Rights of Passage, Masks and Islands, which the author claims demonstrates “the cycles of black New...
Read more
In the following essay, Povey characterizes The Arrivants as a description of Brathwaite's personal search for identity that resonates with an overarching quest for a Caribbean identity.
Once w...
Read more
In the following interview, Rohlehr, an authority on Brathwaite's poetry, expresses admiration for Brathwaite's growth as an artist and reflects on the critical reaction to Brathwaite&#x...
Read more
In the following essay, the author examines “Rights of Passage” as an example of a poem “in which oral languages take revenge against institutionalized poetic forms.”
At th...
Read more
In the following essay, Brathwaite's sister reflects on the importance of the Caribbean Sea as an influence on her brother's poetry. She attempts to show how the movements of the sea are...
Read more
In the following essay, Gowda praises Brathwaite for creating a national language and for moving “from the margins of language and history, from the peripheral realm of ‘the other exiles...
Read more
In the following essay, the author, a noted jazz critic, provides examples of poems showing how Brathwaite's love of jazz is a strong influence on his poetry, a claim made by Brathwaite himself...
Read more
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Edward Kamau Brathwaite
Critical Essay by Julian Symons
