An introduction to West Indian poetry /

Breiner identifies the 1971 meeting of the Association of Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies in Jamaica as crucial in the development of West Indian poetry. V.S. Naipaul was savaged by other writers at that raucous gathering. The issue was the relationship of West Indian literature to African, British, and the US for idiom, subject, and form, and Derek Walcott and Kamau Brathwaite represented the divergencies of local attitudes. Brathwaite's advocacy of "nation language" (dialect, creoles) has been a Gresham's law; poets of "literary" language and standards have generally emigrated to metropolitan centers, for there is no "general audience" in the Caribbean, where many regard poetry preserved in print as "a specifically Western norm." Breiner's excellent survey of the Caribbean literary heritage (especially Haitian) and his review of West Indian literary histories reveal his enviable familiarity with his subject (though he omits references to some prolific and valued poets, such as Evan X. Hyde and Cyril Dabydeen). His appreciations of individual poets and poems are exemplary: he dubs Walcott the "poet of immanence." Declaring the region "a site choked with the fragmentary detritus of many cultures," Breiner wonders whether it can produce a single characteristic literature. The most valuable survey/analysis published to date. All academic collections. A. L. McLeod; Rider University