Book One, chapters 1 -4: Walcott's Omeros opens with a view of the landscape of St. Lucia, introduces us to the men who fish -- and to Helen -- after whom "all the rest followed". Walcott's rich poetic language reminds us to read on many levels, to realize that the meaning of no word can be settled upon precisely, that like the sea that surrounds his homeland island, he will bring us back again and again in fluid rhythms of language to the point of his story. Omeros is not, as Walcott said, the Odyssey rewritten; it is the human drama, an epic of ordinary men and women, heroic in the microcosm of the Caribbean, of the island "where the iguana is found", products of a history that leaves wounds that will not heal.
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