Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Derek Walcott’s "Over Colorado" reflects on history, memory, and the haunting, monumental forces of nature and time. The poem begins with a striking image of Walt Whitman’s beard "unrolled like the Pacific," immediately invoking Whitman’s expansive, democratic vision of America. By connecting Whitman’s beard—a symbol of his poetic authority and grandeur—with the Pacific Ocean, Walcott ties the poet’s legacy to the vast, untamable forces of the American landscape.

Walcott then introduces a shift from Whitman’s grand, prophetic declarations to a personal memory of flying over Colorado. The "starved palomino mountains" offer a powerful image of the natural world, suggesting both beauty and desolation. Colorado’s mountains, in their starkness, seem skeletal, almost like living entities that are both majestic and gaunt. This description underscores a sense of the sublime, where nature’s grandeur evokes awe and terror simultaneously.

The image of a "staggering file of Indians" entering a cloud’s "beard" brings together nature and history, merging the physical landscape with the memory of indigenous peoples. The cloud, often symbolizing ephemerality or the divine, here becomes a shroud for the Native Americans as they disappear into it, perhaps symbolizing their erasure or disappearance from the American historical narrative. The "frozen brave" whom Walcott describes as a "fossil" and a "fern-print on the spine of rock" becomes both a memorial to and a remnant of the past. The fossilized brave represents both the endurance of indigenous memory and its silencing by time and history.

Walcott’s use of snow as a dual symbol—both "his praise" and "his obliterator"—captures the complex dynamic between memory and erasure. The snow both preserves and conceals the brave, highlighting the tension between commemoration and forgetting that defines the poem. This duality reflects the broader theme of how landscapes, particularly in America, hold traces of historical trauma while also participating in the natural process of erasure and renewal.

The poem’s speaker recalls this moment from years ago during a jet flight to Los Angeles, emphasizing the dislocation between past and present. The memory surfaces unexpectedly, unbidden, as if the landscape of Colorado had left an indelible mark on the speaker’s consciousness. This moment of remembrance suggests that the past, particularly the buried histories of indigenous peoples, can resurface unexpectedly, even in the most modern, fleeting experiences such as a plane flight.

Walcott concludes the poem by addressing Whitman’s "democratic vistas," a reference to Whitman’s vision of America as a land of equality and possibility. However, Walcott’s view of America, seen through "parting your leaves of grass," is one tinged with both admiration and a recognition of its fraught history. The "leaves of grass," symbolic of Whitman’s poetic optimism, part to reveal a landscape marked by the erasure of indigenous peoples and the complexities of the American frontier. Walcott questions why this vision of Colorado, with its layered histories, returns to him now, perhaps reflecting on how the past continually intrudes upon the present, especially in landscapes as symbolic as the American West.

In "Over Colorado," Walcott masterfully weaves together themes of memory, history, and nature. The poem reflects on the weight of America’s past, particularly the erasure of its indigenous peoples, while also engaging with Whitman’s expansive, democratic vision. Through vivid imagery and historical allusion, Walcott captures the tension between celebration and mourning, remembrance and forgetting, that defines the American landscape.

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