Derek Walcott: The Spoiler’s Return

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

The Spoiler’s Return

The Fortunate Traveller, New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1981

432-438

Allusion to Classical figure Martial and Juvenal make up part of the ‘Old Brigade of Satire’

Allusion to Classical place A long satirical poem, composed in heroic couplets but in the language of Trinidadian calypso.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts European satirists such a Pope, Rochester, Quevedo, Dryden and Swift. The speaker of the poem is the popular calypsonian ‘The Mighty Spoiler’ (Theophilus Philip). The first section in italics is a quotation from his hit song ‘Bedbug’ (1953), whereas the second conflates lines from Rochester’s poem ‘A Satyr against Reason and Mankind’ with the lyrics of ‘Bedbug’ (see D. M. Vieth (ed.) The Complete Poems of John Wilmott, Earl of Rochester. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

Further Comment For further comment see J. Thieme, ‘'I decompose but I composing still': Derek Walcott and 'The Spoiler's Return'’. The Yearbook of English Studies 25 (1995), pp.163-172