Walcott's Dead

As of right now, no one else has posted on this poem, and it was on the syllabus, I hope it isn't an artifact of last semester's syllabus. But I enjoyed this poem, very much so. The idea of artificial flight - I do not believe I've read a poem before that takes place from the perspective of a plain passenger.

What I really wanted to focus on was how for the majority of the poem, there are only a few completed sentences that end stanzas or part of stanzas. There are many more sentences finished within, which is an interesting writing tool. Of course, the obvious sentences are the first one, the opening: "The airport coffee tastes less of America.", which is a complete sentence, versus the last line of the poem, which awkwardly stands alone (thus putting emphasis on it): "...age after age, the uninstructing dead."

Just looking at those two lines alone brings to mind the idea of an internal emotional arch. The opening sentence, without reading anything else, seems to give a feeling of relief. Almost like: "Thank goodness I can finally get away from all that." It is a sign of perhaps something better to come. But the end of the emotional arch is not relief/hope, but instead a very resigned to the fate given. It is the realization that the dead, no matter how many there may have been and may be, cannot teach a lesson to those living today. They are unable to leave behind a symbolism, a warning, to those who may repeat their mistakes - a repetition of history.

There were also some references I was poking about looking for.

I was interested in the "trans-Texas jet", considering the timing of this flight. Thanks to a little Wikipedia searching, I found that these smaller airports, which had no more than 10 tarmacs, did well until the 1970's 'oil boom', which obviously created more flights. This relates to how Walcott sees that the "air, heavy with gas,/ sickens the state, from Newark to New Orleans."

Another reference is to Borges, and I think the poem discussed was: "The Other Tiger". Granted I found this poem online, so I do not know how accurate it would be but these few lines stuck out at me:

"Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks."

The distance between the tiger and the poet is so far, and so much keeps them apart, far beyond the obvious difference of beast and man.

Another reference that I have trouble relating is what opens the second section: "Elizabeth wrote once/ that we make glass the image of our pain". I think it is a reference to 'The Glass of the Sinful Soul' . With some poking about, I found a review of this on JSTOR, from the Renaissance Quarterly. If I read this correctly, it is by Elizabeth I (in 1544), and she translates another poem by the Queen of Navarre. In the review it says: "...in which a tormented sinner explores the nature of God's love. In this mystical meditation, the female narrator draws on scripture to posit her soul's fourfold relationship with God, as daughter, sister, mother, and wife...". I believe this relates to how Walcott discusses the earth afterwards, in a "mother earth" sort of fashion.

I enjoyed through second section very much, while the last two I had a bit more trouble with. "Yet the South felt like home" - it begins the downwards motion of the arc, where even though the South feels like home, it is dangerous. It's important (and obvious) that he changes his dialect in the fourth stanza of the third section. I'm pretty sure this is a reference to the Klu Klux Klan and lynching. From here, the fourth section is just a heavy realization of how little today's people learn from the past, and the mistakes made in the past.