"The Season of Phantasmal Peace"

by Derek Walcott


photo by Jamie R. Weitz, permission pending

This poem is from Walcott's 1981 collection, The Fortunate Traveller.  Click here for the text.  It can also be found in The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, vol. 2, third ed. (519-20). 

 

Discussion questions:

  Look up the definition and etymology of the word phantasmal; how does the word encapsulate the image of the poem?

Claude Levi-Strauss writes in The Savage Mind: "Consequently everything objective conspires to make us think of the bird world as a metaphorical human society: is it not after all literally parallel to it on another level?" (204).  How does this claim and question help illuminate Walcott's imagery?

Are the birds both literal and metaphoric in this poem.  Do you find significance to any of the following: geese, ospreys, starlings, ravens, killdeer, chough.  Why mention the sound of their calling then refer to "soundless voices" afterward? [click on the bird's name to hear its call]

What is the measure of the difference between dusk and darkness?

With the qualifiers of the poem how do you interpret the final three words: "it lasted long"?

Created by Stan Galloway 20 June 2006.  Last updated 17 March 2008.  Contact me at sgallowa@bridgewater.edu