Accomplished, Sort Of

Finished Omeros today. Tremendous power in the elegiac closing sections, partly as a result of having learnt so much, with such depth, about St Lucia and its residents; the poem accumulates somehow. I'll never look at fishermen in the same way; not that I used to look at them in any real way - which is, in some tiny sense, what the poem is about.
 
And since I finished The Master and his Emissary last weekend, I'm finally able to think about what I'll be reading as we approach the end of the year. I suspect it'll be something from my shelves. I suspect it'll involve segments of The Master and his Emissary and something from my Collected Poems 1948 - 1984 of Walcott. When one's reading experience has been this rich it's difficult to put it to one side. These days I find myself needing to try and live up to the writers I admire by giving them the attention they deserve - but somehow always feeling myself failing in this regard. It's a sort of happy failure though.