The Connection Between The Sea And Poetic Production
Over the ages, many poetry composers have developed different poems, which have served as a crucial art to study at any age. Through poetry, the composer and the audience can have a broad understanding of the world around them. When people embrace and scrutinize poetry, they can learn that it illuminates them with global lucidity and intense veracities summing up the profundity and definition of their lives. Poetry is an art that has survived for many centuries. Poets have used such art in unveiling and recording historical events, creation of memory, and in myth-making among other relations of the same. Great works such as The Sea Is History by Walcott, Children of the Sea by Danticat, and Derek Walcott's Omeros, have integration and outlay of diverse poetic sea imagery and functions including memory site, myth-making, history, violence, and conservation, all which interlink to bring a distinct meaning to the audience. In his compositions, Walcott highlights an intense ingenious unanimity and definition of the sea as an allegory and matter with exemplifications of a poetic apparition and voice wrought by obsession in the Caribbean panoramas. In an attempt to develop the composition, Walcott's The Sea Is History poem surveys the forgetful sea (Cahill-Booth 347). The poet, in this case, brings forth the monologue emerging from a snooping local tidal spectacle, a Caribbean cultural development narrative. As Cahill-Booth highlights it, it has the summation of cultural history drawn by the sea with a memory of cultural confluence and historical oceanic nadirs, as well as annotations of their exceptional dispersions in the sea of the entire island.
The imagery of the sea sounds as outlined by Cahill-Booth silhouettes the archipelago shores. In this case, water is a creative aspect that gives meaning to rocks and ferns of the terrestrial sphere. The sea thrives as a crucial ingenuity experience site reuniting the people of the Caribbean origin to the heart of their culture and environment. This is one of the reasons as to why Walcott employs hegemonic views of the sea to be a formation of the master historical narrative imaging how the sea engenders a regional human experience. Cahill-Booth indicates that Walcott's drawings root their source from the sea, taking it as a source of artistic inspirations and cultural foundation. Historically, individuals have all along with embraced history, language, and environment, a trend that can be termed as geomythography. Cahill-Booth terms geomythography as an instigating anecdote that rethinks the precincts prevailing between poetry and myth, personified knowledge and written texts, as well as cultural and physical landscapes. Cahill-Booth uses geomythography to accentuate that the environment in physical form is a core contributor in cultural memory production. In this scenario, the environment does not just thrive as a stagnant cultural and landscape backdrop grounded by perception experience by people, but instead as a living text modeling mimetic practices (Cahill-Booth 348). With extensive study of the multifaceted comportment of the sea, enduring fluctuations of shorelines, and habitat biodiversity, Walcott develops a broad understanding of the seamark on his distinct charisma.
Walcott comes to a realization of the sea as an entrance thriving between the Caribbean ancestral customs and new era, making him comprehend himself as water, a crossing agent. In such a scope, there is no memorialization of the sea as an estrangement with ancestry, but as new civilizations origins. With such elements in place, Walcott dwells on the traditions cusp and establishes an outlay to his artistic apparition. Besides, Walcott's sea geomythography is a sole one to the frameworks of his imagination. However, with the composition of the sea mythology based on unifying the distinct central roots of his culture, he has some touches of other composers and cultural theoreticians who envisage Caribbean and Atlantic waters as epitomes of origins. Furthermore, Walcott has a pursuit of crossing the Caribbean Sea in search of the history of his people as well as define his cultural beliefs. The travels made by Walcott are not just a homecoming scene, but also a pursuit in locating his actual home. After making his journey to ancestral land and cultural memory site beneath the sea, Walcott’s poems have a review of such trails to a deterritorialized Caribbean focus. Walcott grounds his poems in what can be termed as 'sea amphitheater,' a suggestion of his notion of the sea as an active cultural performance arena. The construction of such arena takes an epic stage arraying ritual theoretical and ritual rudiments based on animating the peoples' narratives in their place.
For Walcott, as Cahill-Booth puts it, the sea roars as psychic and physical sphere just like the people, and it has the inhabitation of presences not available in a documentary. Thus, Walcott roots an original narrative molded by sea via shaping a mutual and emplaced past, value, conviction system. The broad poetry construction by Walcott is an imagination act solidifying a summation of memories of the past with a focus of constructing mythos that ground a definition to the present (Cahill-Booth 357). The voice animating the drawn scenes sources breathe from historical, personal, geographical, and literary impacts, as outlined by Walcott. Moreover, The Sea is History by Walcott is a great drawing that attempts to bring a diversity of aspects and poetic imagery. This drawing sums up arguments based on history and memory aspect, with an attempt to correlate the two from diverse perspectives. In most cases, many societies have a way of marking historical events and legends, failure to which memories of the same in the future might fade away. This calls the need for people to set up a proof of event and legend memory through the establishment of concrete historical makers such as monuments and locations. However, for such kind of events to prevail, there is a need for them to acquire the necessary approvals.
As Walcott unveils the drawing of The Sea is History, there are some indications that history thrives, as a record in a precise and solid form. The sea, in this case, holds some real record of historical occurrences reflecting on the forgotten and drowned individuals. Another vital aspect of this composition is the notion of human history remnants skeleton and shadows, and objects that existed back in the time (Cahill-Booth 351). Though the case might be a difficult one for the audience to define its significance, transparency conception plays a central role in illuminating defined objects beneath them, while obfuscating other aspects of a close relation. There is a rich amalgamation of visual metaphors in The Sea is History, all which relate to the sea. This is an indication that the drawing has an illustration of real examples of figurative language. The background composition is a unique one cutting across the ocean, spilling off a slice of paper expected to form an edging recall (Cahill-Booth 350). Walcott uses the moon to represent the profile of the white woman, among other aspects including a grouper, white cowries, shark, and seaweed. Though the moon appears to form a portion of the composed scene, it is not an earthly aspect hence calling for its removal from every other aspect.
Walcott has placed multiple aspects is his work to portray a real definition of historical works that form memories about the past. There is cutting of the seaweed to bring a resemblance partly on cathedral hence making it have the constitution of distinct silhouettes of individuals. The way Walcott brings along these concepts remains elusive and nearly hidden in the same manner the history and human constituent of slave trade remain restrained. Besides, the use of fish thrives as a representation of institutions and global powers operating the slave trade that continuously uphold manipulative and prejudiced ideologies. Another autobiographical composition is Children of the Sea by Danticat that marks distinct upheavals, revolutions, atrocities, cultural, and sociopolitical dimensions. In this piece or art, there is an assumption of defenders role of the nation and the black race (Meenakshi and Mathews 279). Danticat has established a ground picturing of a defined aspect of political violence in Haiti after a revolution that was against the democratically elected President back at the time. Danticat attempts to highlight numerous subjects, including love, hope, pain, and suffering, to bring a real delineation of various themes. The 'Children of the Sea,' is a depiction of the sufferings of the Haitians, whereby Danticat brings such drawing as a solid background that is unique.
Amid violence, Danticat attempts to image love as an essential human experience. This is evident in the way the girl portrays her love for the young man and father's love upon realizing that he sacrificed a lot to save her from the 'macoutes' (Meenakshi and Mathews 282). The way Danticat grounds the moment of love is a sole proficiency depicting an epitome of love, a wholly shared human sentiment at its most extreme, and an entity that ferocity cannot repudiate. Besides, Danticat indicates that there is desolation in one of the figures – Celianne – who throws herself into the ocean, making the young man experience despair that makes him ready to face death in such a difficult moment. Taking a shift to Derek Walcott's Omeros, there is a sole outlay of an epic poem, one of its own and deeply indebted to Homer and firmly bound to regular chores of an Island life. The dimension of the poem embraces an odyssey dimension, taking a shift from the current day the Caribbean to the presently modernized Europe and the 17th century Africa before going back to Walcott's home island. Walcott draws his works in pursuance of light beyond the metaphor, which is a central drive in every sphere of his work (Joelle 4). From a structural perspective, Walcott creolizes the scope of the epic genre. In Omeros, there is a good reflection of Walcott's experience of the newly empowered individuals of the ebbing empire, hence narrating the struggle for his tribe. The audience is likely to come across reference echoing with facets encountered in classic epics.
Omeros masterpiece by Walcott forms an excellent definition of how historical myths can be embraced metaphors based on clarifying human existence. Walcott links the existence of humans to present, the past and future, as well as fiction and reality, solitude and community, and natural and artificial elements of life. Drawn in the Caribbean in the modern sphere, Omeros illustrates the characteristics from Odyssey and Iliad taking roles in the local and contemporary settings but still maintaining the challenges and issues in their original complements. Nonetheless, it is vital to note Omeros is not all about narrating stories, but also has some touches of free association highlighting how myths, language, and history shape distinct figures residing on islands with various creation myths and marked by global history. The figures incorporated in Omeros embrace and relish nature, and are willing to fight any outbursts and live with the ocean as force majeure singing songs of Omeros. All these they do to identify with the general outline, blend islanders, their boats, different cultural mingling, and stormy waters with typical creatures (Joelle 6). This scope of Walcott's drawing further illustrates the conservative nature of the people living in these islands, whereby they are ready to protect and conserve what they believe is theirs. Besides, Omeros has the incorporation of poetic celebrations of language defining its capacity of uniting people in diverse scenes.
The echo of words in Omeros and their distinct meanings form a portion of the beautiful nature of this piece of art, hence making its chapters to flow like a river, pushing its venture forward in ever-changing but consistent waves. The name Omeros by which this artistic work by Walcott adopts derives its source from three words, the 'O', a shell's solicitation, the 'mer', representing a mother and marine world in the Antillean lingo, and 'os', a snowy surf and grey bone as it clatters and extends its sibilant lapel on the seashore (Joelle 4). As drawn by Walcott, Omeros is a masterpiece and a unique piece of art, as it inhabits contradictions important in aiding the audience to develop an image of a distinct prospect while savoring its language and arrangement. The great and unique drawings by Walcott described, in this case, are staging of art and ordinary vigor, more so when taking a close analysis of the poet's interest in literary conducts. Walcott has apprenticed himself to living sea in the development of his poetic composition, and the vivacity of his focus revitalizes his metaphor and demarcation. In most works including The Sea Is History, Children of the Sea, and Derek Walcott's Omeros, there are indications of harnesses of the kinetic energy of water's continuous movement and redirects the same into the interpretation of image and sound. Walcott weaves together the aspects composing the domicile associates of the sea and contemplation of his poetic drawings.
By way of conclusion, poetry has an illumination of people's conducts of life with facets of global rationality. For many centuries, poetry has thrived as art that poets have used in unveiling and recording historical events and creation of memory. The poetry masterpieces, in this case, are a true definition of what great poets can do. In most of his poetic works, Walcott has summed great compositions all forming imagery of the sea relations, same to Danticat. In his developments, Walcott disciplines himself as a poet focused in interpreting sea tales as well as capturing the creative sparkle released as the sea delivers them in defined perspectives, hence making his poems to be the pursuit and the sea to be the apparition. Thus, prodigious works such as The Sea Is History by Derek Walcott, Children of the Sea by Danticat , and Derek Walcott's Omeros, have integration and outlay of diverse poetic sea imagery and functions including memory site, myth-making, history, violence, and conservation, all which interlink to bring a distinct meaning to the audience.
Works Cited
- Cahill-Booth, Lara. 'Walcott's sea and Caribbean geomythography.' Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2013): 347-358.
- Joelle, Milholm. 'Formation” of a New Island Identity: An Analysis of Foam in Derek Walcott’s Omeros.' Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal: 14.2 (2018): 1-9.
- Meenakshi, Poornamathi and Sushil Mary Mathews. 'Love, Suffering, and Hope in Edwidge Danticat’s “Children of the Sea”.' India’s Higher Education Authority UGC (2018): 278-284.
