SOURCE: Gundy, Jeff. “Position, Connection, Conviction.” Georgia Review 54, no. 1 (spring 2000): 142–56.

In the following excerpt, Gundy compliments Walcott's prose in What the Twilight Says, praising the work's “sharp and stimulating analyses.”

At a mundane banquet long ago I sat near an older man who was new in town; he had come alone. Partway through the meal I overheard him telling his story to the woman across the table: “People have been my life,” he said to her, and then again, “People have been my life.” He seemed to be insisting on something that he wanted badly to believe. As he went on, giving names and places, I found myself thinking, in the arrogance of my youth, that if such dull people had been his life, he could barely claim to have had one. I don't think I ever saw him again or spoke to him directly. But I still...