How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #4
"They walk, you write;/keep to that narrow causeway without looking down,/climbing in their footsteps, that slow, ancestral beat/of those used to climbing roads; your own work owes them because the couplet of those multiplying feet/made your first rhymes." (XIII.iii.75)
The equation of physical labor done by those in the past and the work of the poet in the present makes us think of Seamus Heaney's "Digging," which addresses this same issue. Warwick wants to make sure that his son understands that his duty (and inspiration) as a poet has been determined by the suffering and work of his forbearers.
Quote #5
He found his Homeric coincidence./"Look, love, for instance,/near sunset, on April 12, hear this, the Ville de Paris/struck her colours to Rodney. Surrendered. Is this chance/or an echo? Paris gives the golden apple, a war is fought for an island called Helen?" (XIX.i.100)
Plunkett has let his passion for the Helens take him farther than any historian should go. The association between the French ship with the hapless Paris of Greek myth gives Plunkett the feeling that the battle was really fought for something and not just for the colonization of an island.
Quote #6
Time is the metre, memory the only plot. (XXIV.ii.129)
As Achille succumbs to his sun stroke/spirit journey, he makes this observation. Which means that he's either a natural poet, or Walcott is getting his chops in here. We vote for the latter. Either way, it's clear that the poet views poetry as the proper medium for history and storytelling.