Derek Walcott: Lampfall

Allusion to Classical figure Penelope, Venus (both as goddess of Love and as a planet to navigate by).

Relationship to Classical text No specific allusions are made to the Odyssey, other than to Penelope’s loom. The distance between Odysseus and Penelope evokes tension in Walcott’s poetry.

Further Comment The poet, like Odysseus, is ‘hooked’ to the sea, whilst the poem’s addressee takes on the role of Penelope and watches the sea-rock ‘like a loom/ Shuttling its white wool’. Poetry therefore becomes a form of errancy and a way of straying from domesticity, as well as being linked to pioneering characters and heroic epic. ‘Glaucous’ is a particularly Homeric-sounding adjective.