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 language, culture, and on a philosophy of history that have strong political implications insofar as they aim to liberate the Caribbean mind from the throes of a colonial heritage.”

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 identities and histories. In the case of Brathwaite, this power is used to give voice to the Islands' African ancestry and colonial history.

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.

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 World culture in time and space.”

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 iambic pentameter, a meter that Brathwaite has tweaked to reflect the historical changes that have led to the postcolonial culture of Barbados.

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.

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.”

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.”

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,’ to the center of civilization, effecting a renaissance of oral poetry and remaking the poetic world.”

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 reflected in the rhythms of Brathwaite's work.

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. In particular, the author finds the influence of such jazz geniuses as Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins.

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's work, especially among Caribbean writers.

In the following essay, the author compares Brathwaite to Virgil and focuses on themes of exile.

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 discipline.”

In the following essay, Pollard examines the allusions and rhythms of Brathwaite poems that depict women as rescuers.

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 stirring…. H. D.'s poems are the former kind; Brathwaite's are the latter. I don't mean like a Sousa march either, though I've no objection to Sousa. It is a question of vigor and a certain fibrous resiliency. Brathwaite, who is the foremost poet of the English-speaking Caribbean and at least in some sense a revol...

[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 by Whitman in "Song of Myself," and continued by Pound and Williams in "The Cantos" and "Paterson" respectively. But perhaps "established" isn't the right word, for the form remains vague and personal, even if the general direction of such poems seems to be the discovery of sel...

[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 primitive African rituals in a way that the translations of the Trask anthology are rarely able to do. The author is totally immersed both in the expressive resources of the English tongue and in the firsthand spiritual dynamics of primitive living—a rare combination of proficiencies with lucky dividends for contemporary readers. Brathwait...

[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 language similar to that of blues songs. Attitudes change, children mock their father's Uncle Tom deference, negroes live up to the white conception of them, 'black skin red eyes broad back big you know what'. The total effect is impressive. The poems [in Rights of Passage] have a sense of the present, a feeling for the pa...