The title poem of [Derek Walcott's] second major collection, The Castaway …, portrays a lone man on a sand-bank looking out to sea for rescue. He is lost. The implications are pessimistic. Yet Walcott's progression has been towards greater self-discovery and achievement. It is this paradox that lies behind the work of the finest Caribbean poet writing in English today.
From his earliest published work Walcott turned a critical eye on the predicament of the West Indian. We may find that his attitudes were a little pretentious, but this is not simply because Walcott was a young man when he wrote them. The critical intelligence he turned on his world he turned also on himself. In the first poem of In a Green Night, 'Prelude', he placed himself in a relationship to his poetry that is in part self-mocking…. This is the stance expected of the young West Indian intellectual. It also has a more serious purpose. Such attitudes are a protective mask, necessary until experience forms deeper reactions to life…. The styles that embody his attitudes are also 'useful'. They are ways by which he may discover his personal voice. Every young poet has to use experiments in style as stalking horses to track down his true poetic medium, but it is particularly important for a West Indian passionately concerned with the craft of words in areas where there is no native poetic tradition. Walcott tries on mask after mask…. But the very consistency and thoroughness of Walcott's early experiment should warn the critic that here is not simply an imitative poet. And as Walcott's experiments continued, gradually but surely, we see his masks shimmering, dissolving, and a face, Walcott's poetic features, appearing through. (pp. 86-8)
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