Derek Walcott's eighth collection of poems, The Arkansas Testament is divided into two part - "Here," verse evoking the poet's native Caribbean, and Elsewhare." It opens with six poems in quatrains whose memorable, compact lines further Walcott's continuous effort to crystallize images of the Caribbean landscape and people.

For several years, Derek Walcott has lived mainly in the States.
"The Arkansas Testament," one of the book's long poems is a powerful confrontation of changing allegiances. The poem's crisis is the taking on of an extra history, one that challenges unquestioning devotion.

Incantatory, mesmerizing lyricism ... Walcott has been described as a 20^th - century man with an Elizabethan sense of language.  Surely it's safe to conclude that he has taken what he has  learned of imperial English as a second language and transformed it into verbal magic.   

- G. E. Murray, Chicago Tribune

With his mastery of lyric, epic dramatic and narrative genres, Walcott reminds me of Tintoretto: he is garish and bold, unequaled in catching observed particulars in the density of stop-time ...He can describe a place in such a way that it has character, inwardness and mystery.

-Mark Rudman, The New york times Book Review

Walcott "the outsider" is the supreme poet of the Caribbean,because he has rejected the easy labeling that might have enabled him to make peace with himself. The Arkansas Testament is witness to his ongoing struggle.

 - Caryl Phillips, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Walcott is honoured by the language he writes in, and in turn he adds to its honour.

-D. J. Enright, The New Republic

Extracts from the Arkansas Testament

Cul de Sac Valley

Roseau Valley

A panel of sunrise

on a hillside shop

gave these stanzas

their stilted shape.

If my craft is blest;

if this hand is as

accurate, as honest

as their carpenter’s,

every frame, intent

on its angles, would

echo this settlement

of unpainted wood

as consonants scroll

off my shaving plane

in the fragrant Creole

of their native grain;

(For George Odlum)

A shovelful of blackbirds

shot over the road’s shoulder

and memory twittered backwards

past the juddering steamroller

gravelling the asphalt road

this sunrise through Roseau

to the sugar mill that roared

to a stop and the widening echo

of canes, when they used to grow

cane in this sweet valley;

then from the canes in arrow,

blackbirds shot in volley

Gros-Ilet

Saint Lucia’s First Communion

From this village, soaked like a grey rag in salt water,

a language came, garnished with conch shells,

with a suspicion of berries in its armpits

and elbows like flexible oars.  Every ceremony commenced

in the troughs, in the middens, at the daybreak and the

 daydark funerals attended by crabs.

At dusk, on the edge of the asphalt’s worn-out ribbon,

in white cotton frock, cotton stockings, a black child stands.

First her, then a small field of her.  Ah, it’s First Communion!

They hold pink ribboned missals in their hands,

the stiff plaits pinned with their white satin moths. 

The caterpillar’s accordion, still pumping out the myth

along twigs of cotton from whose parted mouths

the water pods in belief without an “if”!