Book picks similar to
The Arkansas Testament by Derek Walcott


poetry
caribbean
poesía
caribbean-literature

The Occasions


Eugenio Montale - 1949
    This book is his most experimental work, but a work no less tradition-saturated than Eliot's. As poet, private individual, and "good European", Montale's way of dealing with his difficulties was to seize the occasions offered him by writing poetry in which the lover's passions for his beloved country would convey the truth of both his public and his private situations.

Autobiografía de un esclavo


Juan Francisco Manzano - 1975
    Ivan Schulman introduces the text to place it in historical and cultural context. The Autobiography of a Slave makes available a major literary text and important social document, one that will contribute to the growing interest in Latin American slave societies and African Diaspora history and culture.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage


Lord Byron - 1812
    Since the title character is a "childe", it means he was a noble who forgoes his destiny back home for the exciting unknown. It's also eerily similar to Lord Byron's own life story, of a man who traveled across Europe to take part in other nations' wars.

A Moon for the Misbegotten


Eugene O'Neill - 1947
    Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, asJim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.

The Complete Poems


John Keats - 1820
    

A Grain of Wheat


Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - 1967
    At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.

So Forth: Poems


Joseph Brodsky - 1996
    Joseph Brodsky's last volume of poems in English, So Forth, represents eight years of masterful self-translation from the Russian, as well as a substantial body of work written directly in English.

Your Soul is a River


Nikita Gill - 2012
    Directions: apply to your soul gently, whilst sitting under the stars.

The Sun and Her Flowers


Rupi Kaur - 2017
    A vibrant and transcendent journey about growth and healing. Ancestry and honoring one’s roots. Expatriation and rising up to find a home within yourself.Divided into five chapters and illustrated by Kaur, the sun and her flowers is a journey of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. A celebration of love in all its forms. this is the recipe of lifesaid my motheras she held me in her arms as i wept think of those flowers you plantin the garden each year they will teach youthat people toomust wiltfallrootrisein order to bloom

The Woman I Kept to Myself


Julia Alvarez - 2004
    They have shaped her writing just as they have shaped her life. In these seventy-five autobiographical poems, Alvarez’s clear voice sings out in every line. Here, in the middle of her life, she looks back as a way of understanding and celebrating the woman she has become.

Selected Poems


Emily Dickinson - 1890
    Includes "There's a certain slant of light," "Because I could not stop for death," "It was not death for I stood up."

The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals


Elizabeth Smart - 1978
    She was educated at private schools in Canada and for a year at King's College, University of London. One day, while browsing in a London bookshop, she chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker - and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife to the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely recognized as a classic work of poetic prose which, more than four decades later, has retained all of its searing poignancy, beauty and power of impact. After the war, Elizabeth Smart supported herself and her family with journalism and advertising work. In 1963 she became literary and associate editor of Queen magazine but subsequently dropped out of the literary scene to live quietly in a remote part of Suffolk. Elizabeth Smart died in 1986.

The Complete Poems


Catullus
    He is also a satirical and epigrammatic writer who savagely consoles with laughter. Carmina captures in English both the mordant, scathing wit and also the concise tenderness, the famous love for reluctant Lesbia who is made present in these new versions. A range of English metres and rhymes evoke the epigrammatic power of the many modes and moods of this most engaging, erotic and influential of the Latin poets. He left a mark on Horace, Virgil, Ovid and on the lyric and epigrammatic traditions of all the languages of Europe. Of Len Krisak's Horace translations, Frederic Raphael said, ‘[He] enables us both to enjoy a fresh voice and to hear (and see), very distinctly, what lies behind and within his unintimidated rescripts’. Again in Carmina he works his precise magic.

Power Politics


Arundhati Roy - 2000
    war on terrorism. A Book Sense 76 choice for November/December 2001 and Los Angeles Times "Discoveries" selection, Power Politics challenges the idea that only experts can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the privatization of India’s power supply by U.S.-based energy companies, and the construction of monumental dams in India.Arundhati Roy, the internationally acclaimed author of The God of Small Things, brings her keen novelist’s eye to her analysis of the tragic events of September 11 and the military response, starting with the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

Swallow


Sefi Atta - 2010
    A succession of unfortunate events leads Tolani, a bank secretary, to be persuaded by her roommate Rose to consider drug trafficking as a way to make a living. Tolani's subsequent struggle with temptation forces her to reconsider her morality—and that of her mother Arikes—as she embarks on a turbulent journey of self-discovery.