Derek Mahon: XVI: America Deserta

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Hugh Haughton links Mahon’s title to Charles M. Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888), Arabia Deserta being the Roman name for the desert interior of the Arabian peninsula (p.298 in H. Haughton, The Poetry of Derek Mahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Note, however, that Scenes in America Deserta is the title of a travelogue by the architectural critic P. Reyner Banham, published in 1982, also influenced by Doughty’s volume.

Further Comment Aside from the intertexts noted above, Mahon’s use of ‘Deserta’ (meaning deserted, desert, solitary) also reflects the fact that he himself has now abandoned America and returned to home soil.