I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very strong thing.
Derek WalcottRead
Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it isn't that they mutter and criticize; it is that the poet does not accept the situation called the 'perfect' condition of man - in other words, perfect in the materialistic sense.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that poets challenge societal norms and notions of perfection by questioning materialistic ideals.
Derek Walcott's quote reflects the idea that poets have a unique role in society, functioning as critics of the status quo. In a so-called 'ideal' society, where materialism and a narrow definition of perfection prevail, poets are at risk of being marginalized because they express dissent and provoke deeper thought about the human condition. Their purpose transcends mere critique; they challenge the very definition of what it means to be 'perfect' by highlighting the complexities and imperfections inherent to humanity.
Themes
PoetsSocietyCritiquePerfectionHuman Condition
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a speech about the role of art in societal critique.
More from Derek Walcott
All quotes →Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
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A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other.
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My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
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When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
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The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
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