RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

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West Indian poetry entwined with the patrician tradition. George Handley defines this
crucial difference as one between a classical A-damic and a qualified a-damic vision:
A return to the elemental task of the poet to name the world in elation is to begin
again the process of building a culture of possibility, even if the poet must pretend
that it happens as if for the first time. Without this as if qualification the poet will
become blind to history and only see the broad spread of the world‘s innocent
newness; poetry will function as a neocolonial Adamic possession of land. (New
World Poetics, 3)
Walcott‘s poem ―Names‖ exemplifies this poetics of seeing the world as if it were
elemental (Collected Poems 305). Moving with geographic fluidity between the Middle
East, India, and the West Indies, the poet asserts that he has ―never found that [original]
moment‖ before language, but nevertheless his ―race began as the sea began / with no
nouns, and with no horizon.‖ Although each place acquires a palimpsest of names such as
the Creole-English juxtaposition of ―moubain: the hogplum, / cerise: the wild cherry,
baie-la: the bay,‖ the ―fresh green voices‖ exceed any one language.
Achille fails his quest for his original name and learns to remain incomplete. The
failed yet paradoxically healing process of learning the fragmentary history of his
ancestors grounds the hero in his current reality, raking leaves in Omeros‘ yard.
Postcolonial displacement creates the desire for another Troy or second Eden, but in
order to avoid a ―neocolonial‖ possession of the land, Walcott writes a self-reflexive epic
that sings of heroes as if they were characters in originating myths. Unlike the thematic
statements and invocations that begin the Iliad and Aeneid, Walcott ends Omeros with an
explanation: