Walcott, Derek

Tiepolo's Hound

New York, NY, USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000. First Edition. Hardcover. “They stroll on Sundays down Dronningens Street, / passing the bank and the small island shops // quiet as drawings, keeping from the heat / through Danish arches until the street stops // at the blue, gusting harbour, where like commas / in a shop ledger gulls tick the lined waves. // Sea-light on the cod barrels writes: “St. Thomas, / the salt breeze brings the sound of Mission slaves // chanting deliverance from all their sins / in tidal couplets of lament and answer, // the horizon underlines their origins— / Pissarros from the ghetto of Braganza // who fled the white hoods of the Inquisition / for the bay’s whitecaps, for the folding cross // of a white herring gull over the Mission / droning its passages from Exodus…”--Derek Walcott, first several stanzas from “(I),” pg. 5. Derek Walcott (1930-2017), was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright known for collections like: The Prodigal (2004), Selected Poems (2007), White Egrets (2010), and Morning, Paramin (2016). In 1992, Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee described his work as “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.” Throughout his long & lauded career, Walcott’s work often continually ruminated on themes of language, power, and place which is palpable in all of his collections. Offered today is the 2000 book-length long-poem Tiepolo’s Hound. From inside front flap of dust jacket: “Tiepolo's Hound joins the quests of two Caribbean men: Camille Pissarro--a Sephardic Jew born in 1830 who leaves his native St. Thomas to follow his vocation as a painter in Paris--and the poet himself, who longs to rediscover a detail--"a slash of pink on the inner thigh / of a white hound"--of a Venetian painting encountered on an early visit from St. Lucia to New York. Both journeys take us through a Europe of the mind's eye, in search of a connection between the lost, actual landscape of a childhood and the mythical landscape of empire. Published with twenty-five full-color reproductions of Derek Walcott's own paintings, the poem is at once the spiritual biography of a great artist in self-imposed exile, a history in verse of Impressionist painting, and a memoir of the poet's desire to catch the visual world in more than words.” Walcott’s grounded, visceral & emotionally raw style delivers a lyricism that is steeped in both a quiet introspection as well as immense pathos. An increasingly rare Walcott collectible! From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), an acclaimed American poet, author, film critic, editor & academician here at the University of Michigan. We have found and retained between half-title and title pages a sheet of paper titled “A Word of Explanation," which has hand-written notes from Goldstein on passages from Tiepolo’s Hound. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket. First edition as stated (“First Edition 2000”) at copyright page, presumed first printing though not explicated as such thereon. Book in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges. Dust jacket very fine with only minor wear to fine edges, and slight smudging/scratching to front and back covers. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #9373]

Price: $75.00 save 10% $67.50