Throughout his poems, plays, and visual art, Derek Walcott acknowledges and questions Western literary and historical traditions. His mastery of traditional forms and motifs includes experimentation that challenges the ability of those forms to tell modern, comprehensive stories. While his use of formal verse structures and his exploration of classical and Biblical narratives acknowledge a collective past, Walcott’s work also integrates a modern, personal perspective, making for poetic narratives that speak on both a global and an intimate level.

Walcott’s work draws especially on Western classical philosophy and the poetic epic. Understanding how epic poetry shapes cultures and defines—from ancient Greece and Rome, to medieval Florence, to England in the grip of civil war—Walcott searches for the language suitable for a modern epic. His later works “The Bounty” and Omeros move more directly to epic form, but even in “To Return to the Trees,” his scope can be seen. The voices of the Western tradition emerge in the poem, specifically in the appearances of Ben Jonson and Seneca, but also in the concept of the “senex,” the wise old man. Samson from the Christian Bible and Atlas from Greek mythology personify the speaker’s idea that moments of balance, the