SOURCE: Noor, Ronny. Review of What the Twilight Says, by Derek Walcott. World Literature Today 73, no. 2 (spring 1999): 339–40.

In the following review, Noor offers a positive assessment of What the Twilight Says, though expresses concern over Walcott's failure to challenge the vocabulary and prejudices of European imperialism.

Derek Walcott, the 1992 Nobel laureate from St. Lucia, is arguably the preeminent poet in the English language. This celebrated winner of numerous awards for poetry turns out to be an excellent critic in the collection of essays, reviews, and one story titled What the Twilight Says. All these previously published pieces reflecting twenty-seven years (1970–97) of critical study have been grouped into three sections.

The first section contains the title piece, “What the Twilight Says,” which encapsulates Walcott's conception of the postcolonial or New World, as he calls it. The inheritance of the Caribbean man, he says, is both African and European. He...