[Derek Walcott] dedicates many of the poems in The Fortunate Traveller to, presumably, friends—from Joseph Brodsky to Susan Sontag—but his dedications have an unmistakable air of name-dropping, of bandying cultural credentials. The cultures Walcott evokes on his travels … are many and varied—geographically and historically—and the range of ostensible literary connections or devotions is great. Yet it is clear from the first poem, "Old New England", whose voice it is that exercises the most powerful spell over Walcott…. The spire, the whale, hellfire—the progression and the terms are Robert Lowell's; the hectic tone, the densely-packed phrases and lunging alliterative lines, all early Lowell as well. The whole is a consummate piece of ventriloquism—except that Lowell would not have sunk to the simplistic equation … that Walcott makes here.

When Walcott moves beyond this slavish imitation of the master, his outsider's eye on New York...