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

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symbolism for a sensibility that is pastoral but pragmatic; not a pristine past but the
recoverable fragments.
Both Snyder and Walcott negotiate an ambivalent position in history through
syncretic strategies to include as many ancestors as is bioregionally possible. Both take a
revised view of the traditionally blank ocean as a historical link between the islandrhizomes
of archipelagos and the unifying principle of surrounding coastal peoples.
California joins Japan on the edge of the North Pacific Gyre. The Antilles joins the
British Isles on the edge of the Sargasso Sea. The volcanic Suwanose-Jima in the East
China Sea provided Snyder with the spiritual and ecological lessons of place, which he
brought home to California. The supposedly isolated geography of St. Lucia required
Walcott to formulate a historical understanding of the sea by which he could uncover the
transnational place of his home in the Windward Islands. Both poets‘ primitive and
modern fusions attempt to recycle ancient memories of natural belonging for a viable
future. Arrowheads and paddles ultimately function like dynamite and telephones.
Defending a balanced use of modern tools according to the ancient ―subsistence patterns
of a place‖ known by the ―peasants, paisanos, paysan, peoples of the land‖ (Snyder,
Place in Space 184), these New World poets subvert linear history into a circle of
progress that returns again and again to the old ways. Martel‘s postcolonial and
environmental shipwreck narrative serves as a clear lens for explicating Achille‘s
acceptance and commitment to St. Lucia. The lens works equally well for Snyder,
treating Regarding Wave as the poet‘s Pacific search and Turtle Island as his return home
to the real work, the practical business of long-term survival.