Background Derek Walcott, a Caribbean poet and playwright, was raised
with his twin brother and sister on the island of Saint Lucia in the West Indies. Of
African and European descent, Walcott and his twin brother lost their father, a
painter, before they were born. As a young man, Walcott studied writing
because he was “madly in love with English,” and he published his first poem at
the age of 14. Nearly fifty years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Walcott dedicates this poem to the well-known English poet Stephen Spender,
whose poetry, like Walcott’s, often focuses on themes of social injustice.
Elsewhere
Poem by Derek Walcott
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1.
As you read lines 1–12, begin to collect and cite text evidence.
t Circle each use of the word somewhere.
t Underline the example of personification in lines 5–8.
t In the margin, analyze how the image it creates contributes to the tone of the
poem.
(For Stephen Spender)
Somewhere a white horse gallops with its mane
plunging round a field whose sticks
are ringed with barbed wire, and men
break stones or bind straw into ricks.
5
Somewhere women tire of the shawled sea’s
weeping, for the fishermen’s dories
still go out. It is blue as peace.
Somewhere they’re tired of torture stories.
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That somewhere there was an arrest.
10
Somewhere there was a small harvest
of bodies in the truck. Soldiers rest
somewhere by a road, or smoke in a forest.
Somewhere there is the conference rage
at an outrage. Somewhere a page
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is torn out, and somehow the foliage
no longer looks like leaves but camouflage.
Somewhere there is a comrade,
a writer lying with his eyes wide open
on a mattress ticking, who will not read
20
2.
this, or write. How to make a pen?
Reread lines 1–12. What is the speaker emphasizing by
repeating the word somewhere? How does the repetition of this word
choice affect the meaning and tone of the poem? Support your answer with
explicit textual evidence.
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3.
As you read lines 13–20, continue to cite textual evidence.
• Circle the simile in lines 13–16.
• In the margin, explain the image that this simile creates.
• Underline the subject of lines 17–20. In the margin, state the point the poet is
making about this person.
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Somewhere there is a
comrade . . . who will not
read this, or write.
And here we are free for a while, but
elsewhere, in one-third, or one-seventh
of this planet, a summary rifle butt
breaks a skull into the idea of a heaven
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where nothing is free, where blue air
is paper-frail, and whatever we write
will be stamped twice, a blue letter,
its throat slit by the paper knife of the state.
Through these black bars
30
hollowed faces stare. Fingers
grip the cross bars of these stanzas
© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
and it is here, because somewhere else
4.
5.
With a small group, discuss the tone of the
poem so far. What is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject?
As you read lines 21–40, continue to cite textual evidence.
• Circle what is happening “here,” in line 21.
• Underline what is happening “elsewhere.”
• In the margin, compare what is happening “here” with what is happening
“elsewhere.” What does this comparison say about freedom?
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their stares fog into oblivion
thinly, like the faceless numbers
35
that bewilder you in your telephone
diary. Like last year’s massacres.
The world is blameless. The darker crime
is to make a career of conscience,
to feel through our own nerves the silent scream
40
6.
of winter branches, wonders read as signs.
As you reread lines 33–40,
• in the margin, explain the two images in lines 33–36.
• underline the personification in the last stanza.
SHORT RESPONSE
Cite Text Evidence Analyze the impact of specific word choices, including
figurative and connotative meanings of words, on the meaning and tone of
the poem. Cite text evidence in your response.
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© Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
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