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" The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts. "
Derek Walcott
Ruins
Over
Sugar
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" There are some things people avoid saying in interviews because they sound pompous or sentimental or too mystical. "
Derek Walcott
Sound
People
Some
" How does a poet teach himself or herself? I think chiefly by imitation, chiefly by practising it as a deliberate technical exercise often. Translation, imitation, those were my methods anyway. "
Derek Walcott
Think
Poet
Exercise
" I'm from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean in the Lesser Antilles, the lower part of the archipelago, which is a bilingual island - French, Creole, and English - but my education is in English. "
Derek Walcott
Island
Education
Caribbean
" My dedication to trying to be a poet started very, very young, and I was very well encouraged by good teachers and by older friends and so on, so I think it is a benediction, and I also think it is a calling, a duty. "
Derek Walcott
Think
Dedication
Friends
" I don't think poetry has a readership anywhere, really, that's that big. "
Derek Walcott
Really
Poetry
Think
" The poet complains or points out the discontent that lies at the heart of man, the individual man, and how can that be redeemed? "
Derek Walcott
Heart
Poet
Out
" When I come to England, I don't claim England; I don't own it. I feel a great kinship because of the literature and the landscape. I have great affection for Edward Thomas and Philip Larkin, but there's still this distance: looking on at what I'm admiring, separate from what I am. And that's OK. "
Derek Walcott
Looking
Landscape
I Am
" I made a vow that I wouldn't be tempted by what could happen to me if I went to Europe. I thought, 'You could be absorbed in it - it's so seductive, you might lose your own search for identity.' Then, when I did finally go to Europe, I was able to resist it because I had established my own identity. "
Derek Walcott
Identity
You
Thought
" Look at Allen Ginsberg. In poems like 'Kaddish' and 'Howl,' you can hear a cantor between the lines. It's fully alive, and I think that's what's missing in modern poetry. It's too dry and cerebral. "
Derek Walcott
Missing
Alive
Look
" The greatest writers have been, at heart, parochial, provincial in their rootedness. "
Derek Walcott
Heart
Greatest
Been
" I don't want to write poems about the royal wedding. I would have to be moved by the event. "
Derek Walcott
Write
Event
Royal
" I grew up in a place in which, if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it. "
Derek Walcott
Scream
You
Poetry
" I hate all that nonsense about not touching the colonialists' language. All that about it being corrupting and belonging to the master and making you Caliban. That thinking just denies you an outlet. You deny everything that is great from a language, whether it is Conrad or Shakespeare. "
Derek Walcott
Language
Hate
Great
" What was moving, I think, was the fact that the statue is a woman and not a heroic, manly figure. So for all her scale and immensity, there's something soft about the Statue of Liberty, something tender about her. "
Derek Walcott
Liberty
Woman
Her
" I always have difficulty with the Greek tragic plays. I think the difficulty one has - which is a serious problem - is the question of belief. Do you believe in the myth that the play expresses? Do you believe in it as myth or as reality? With any play, you have to believe in it as reality. You can't act a myth. "
Derek Walcott
Reality
Believe
Problem
" My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race. "
Derek Walcott
Generation
Race
Over
" Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting. "
Derek Walcott
Art
Painting
Know
" After a while, when the writer is mature, it doesn't really matter - not because of finances but because of reputation. It doesn't really matter how many awards you get. "
Derek Walcott
You
Reputation
Mature
" I'd rather have just one person who reads and feels my work deeply than hundreds of thousands who read it but don't really care about. "
Derek Walcott
Just One
Just
Care
" I don't believe that poetry is in danger because nobody wants to read it or appreciate it. There is a tremendous audience for it on any given day or night. You just have to know where to look. "
Derek Walcott
Look
Poetry
Night
" What makes a poem is the discipline inherent in making a poem: trying to fit feelings in the requisite number of syllables and lines, disciplining one's feelings. "
Derek Walcott
Trying
Discipline
Feelings
" Modesty is not possible in performance in the Caribbean - and that's wonderful. "
Derek Walcott
Performance
Possible
Wonderful
" A noun is not a name you give something. It is something you watch becoming itself, and you have to have the patience to find out what it is. "
Derek Walcott
You
Watch
Patience
" Anybody great, we're all interested in the relics. If you found an unfinished Gauguin, you'd still want to see it. "
Derek Walcott
Interested
See
Great
" Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves. "
Derek Walcott
Surprise
Beauty
History
" If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. "
Derek Walcott
Average
You
Writing
" Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god. "
Derek Walcott
Remembering
Memory
Like
" The personal vocabulary, the individual melody whose metre is one's biography, joins in that sound, with any luck, and the body moves like a walking, a waking island. "
Derek Walcott
Walking
Personal
Body
" Where I come from, we sing poetry. "
Derek Walcott
Poetry
Where
Sing
" The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people. "
Derek Walcott
Myself
Language
Been