‘White Egrets’ Wades Through Memory and Regret

Every poetic career follows a different trajectory. Yeats’ style evolved and improved throughout his long career; Wordsworth composed his greatest works in his youth, but continued writing through his old age. The deterioration of poetic talent must be one of the greatest fears of an aging poet. Although Derek Walcott—who turned eighty this past January—is a Nobel Laureate and the author of over twenty published volumes of poetry, the dread of losing his poetic ability permeates “White Egrets,” his newest collection. He writes, “If it is true that my gift has withered, that there’s little left of it, / if this man is right, then there’s nothing left to do / but abandon poetry like a woman because you love it / and would not see her hurt, least of all by me.”

But despite his evident misgivings, Walcott is in no danger of harming the craft of poetry. Far from it, he writes in characteristically powerful verse, maintaining a pulsing rhythm and forceful voice throughout his collection. “White Egrets” is composed of a sequence of poems that range in subject from Walcott’s travels in Italy and Spain to his former love affairs. As he explores a wide array of memories and places, the poet attempts to come to terms with his recollections of the past and the effects of age upon his body and mind.

“White Egrets” is aptly named; images of the splendid birds are scattered throughout the collection. In one instance, the birds become symbols of immortality as Walcott contemplates the inevitable mortality of himself and his friends. The birds, part of a natural cycle, return annually, seemingly unchanged, while the personalities around him disappear year by year: “Some friends, the few I have left / are dying, but the egrets stalk through the rain / as if nothing mortal can affect them, or they lift / like abrupt angels, sail, then settle again.” Elsewhere, he himself identifies with the birds, comparing his own white hair to the birds’ white feathers.

Even when Walcott is not explicitly contemplating the process of aging, whiteness saturates his vision; he notices the white shore, white ferries, white wine, the “white scream” of birds, and even the whiteness of the page as his poem comes to a close. In his constant encounters with objects washed in white, Walcott is trying to create a kind of visual rhyme. In his poem “In Italy,” in which he speaks of his experience in Italy as an elderly man, he writes, “my hair rhymes with those far crests and the bells / of the hilltop towers number my errors.” Walcott’s repetitious images of whiteness create a lyrical continuity among his poems. Each one can easily stand on its own, but together they form a natural sequence of memories and contemplations.

At times, Walcott’s obsession with the effects of age runs the risk of becoming too personal, or even self-indulgent. Details of his physical ailments and his fear of waning virility can detract from his deeper meditations on his hopes, his regrets, and his poetry. At one point, he describes “a furious itch that raises welts” over his body; elsewhere he writes, “My lust is in great health, but, if it happens / that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand, / joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pens / elation....” Yet although the poet’s fixation on physiognomy is somewhat off-putting, it also serves as a reminder of his basic humanity. The speaker in these poems is not only a craftsman rendering his visions of life into astonishing verse—he is also an elderly man like any other, faced with the concerns that accompany the process of getting older.

It is when Walcott turns his attention to his own poetry, however, that he displays the heights of his lyrical abilities. As he gazes once more at egrets taking flight in the distance, he compares them to the poems that he is sending forth into the world: “they are the bleached regrets / of an old man’s memoirs, printed stanzas / showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets.” The “bleached” quality of his thoughts is not due to his age alone; the poet is presenting himself to the world—starkly and without dissemblance.

Though Walcott displays his most naked doubts and feelings, his collection never becomes too self-serious. His sense of humor helps to create a variety of tone throughout his work. Walcott reveals a keen wit, peppering his verse with quips such as, “Well, if we burnt, it was at least New York.”

But he always returns to those figures of purity and openness, the white birds who are symbols of both age and immortality. With a long career already behind him, Walcott’s concern lies not only with the precariousness of his physical life, but also with the lifespan of the poetry that he has spent a lifetime crafting. This collection, however, indicates that there is no cause for the poet’s anxiety. Walcott has managed to shape a sequence of poems as blindingly majestic as the birds for which they are named.

—Staff writer Rachel A. Burns can be reached at rburns@fas.harvard.edu.