This is not my kind of poetry. In "Reactions to the Poems of T.S. Eliot", Charles Powell is quoted as having said that "'the ordinary reader' would 'make nothing of it'" and I think that is the case with me. I give the poems themselves two stars, but bump the book up to three stars because of the extra material at the end.

This is the first book of poetry I have read by Eliot and while the poems were not bad, they are really just not for me. I like poetry that makes the reader feel something, even if that reader doesn't necessarily understand all of what the poet is trying to convey. These poems just left me a little frustrated as the number of allusions was a bit overwhelming for me. In his review, I.A. Richards discredits the accusation that Eliot's use of allusions is excessive and unnecessary, but for me the criticism still stands. It's hard to get into a poem when some of the best lines and taken word-for-word from another source. That's less of an allusion and more of a lazy way to make a poem more interesting.

Also, the prejudice in the poems was another downside. The poor views of Jewish people and women took away some of the appeal of the poems for me. Despite the time period in which these poems were written, it is still difficult to enjoy such prejudice pieces.

I do think the information at the end of the book was helpful in understanding some of the criticisms and praise for Eliot's work as well as giving some insight into what imagism and vorticism are. The discussion of the connections of Eliot's poetry and antisemitism was also interesting and informative.

I've read (and listened to) this collection of poems half a dozen times. THE WASTE LAND is, without a doubt, still my favourite. It's hard to understand, pompous at times and so dense with allusions to other works I lose track of what's Eliot's work and what isn't. And yet ... on some atavistic level this poem still "talks" to me. The rhythm, the magic, the sheer (dare I say it) poetry in the lines (April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land) draws a reader in and shakes up emotions I didn't even know I had.

The tension between the physical and the metaphysical is tremendous; Eliot clearly had a deep experience of how earthbound and limited we are by the very denseness of our bodies (...the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank), while the voice of our souls rush by unheard (The wind Crosses the brown land unheard). THE WASTE LAND is a mournful cry of a man trapped in a world of harsh reality (it was written only four years afer the devastation of Europe in World War 1), sensing there is something more (Madame Sosostris), yet unable to feel or perhaps believe in it (... this card, which is blank,...,which I am forbidden to see). Here, in this poem, is the struggle between the intellect and the emotions (fear death by water - in the Tarot the water cards represent emotion), good and evil and man's lower, sexual nature and his higher, Divine nature.

What a brilliant, depressing, strong poem it is!

So strong, it almost overshadows the other poems in this collection. But ASH WEDNESDAY, with its tone of sorrow and penitance already obvious from the title, is another powerful poem, as is JOURNEY OF THE MAGI and the remainder of the poems.

In its struggle between hope and despair, this collection is as relevant today as it was in Eliot's time and is worth the effort it takes to try and grasp its elusive meaning.

 

This volume consists of Eliot's first two poetry collections,Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and Poems (1920), along with The Waste Land(1922). The first half of Prufrock andTWL are essential modernist poems. The very modern tension of isolation, cynicism, the longing for an idealized past, and a desperate, clinging hope for the future are perfectly encapsulated in Eliot's best early verse. Unfortunately, the second half of Prufrock and virtually all of Poems fail to maintain this standard. The anti-semitism of Poems is particularly disturbing. That said, The Waste Land should be required reading for anyone interested in modern and post-modern literature.

My ode to T.S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot,
You walked among the stars
In your words,
light trails blazing.
Master of the modern,
Ruler of the poetic.
There is, and was, no poet to compare.
Your mythology and legend stand immense.

Behold the waste land of the world,
Behold the glorious prose of a world shaker.
Though some have called thee,
Mighty and dreadful plagiarist,
Such slander upholds your greatness,
The potency of your reinvention.
There is a power to you - in rewriting the eloquent

So behold T.S. Eliot.
A masterful poet.
One who walked among the stars
And brought the heavens a little nearer.
What more can a poet do?

There is a simplicity to the greatest poetry. And at once there is a complexity. There is a simplicity, in that the greatest works of poetry don't contain wordiness or explicitly state their intentions. They strip back language to allow for a nice flow and rhythm to what they are doing. But at the same time there is a complexity generated by a presumed sense of intent and knowledge. The poet assumes that you will get, from the scarcity of language used, what they are aiming to convey. And that is part of the beauty of language, that because the poet strips everything down, there is so much which you can read into and draw as your own understanding of what the poem is about.

And that is what I sensed in The Wasteland and the other poems. The Wasteland is universally accepted as one of the most important pieces of modernism - regardless of all the arguments about it being a plagiarised piece of fiction. For an interesting breakdown on that idea of plagiarism and literature read this article . And no matter how you read Eliot's work: as a reinvention of older myths and narratives; as a depiction of a destroyed post-war landscape and the people affected by that world; or as a beautiful piece of art; there is so much to gain from reading this work. It really all proves that simply because older ideas are drawn upon and referenced that it doesn't have to be stealing.

Upon further reading and analysis it has come to my attention that what Eliot does in this masterpiece is to both play off the worlds of the common peasants and bourgeoise with those who would be considered academic royalty. He sets up a comparison of white collar and blue collar workers, essentially creating a poem that works like a giant chessgame. In some ways a game of oneupmanship in which Eliot tells the reader that he is better than them but still sympathetic to them. This can be seen in the classical references to high forms of literary art that Eliot draws upon. But there are also elements in which Eliot shows that he is not supercilious and in fact appears to both sympathise and empathise with the proletariat working class (the second section for instance and in lines such as "consider Phlebas" particularly seem to suggest this).

Regardless of how you want to read it I challenge you to go and read one of the great works of literature. It is a notoriously difficult poem to understand and I know I got very little of it, but it was powerful and moving. And I am now looking forward to further discussion and dissection of this in upcoming classes. Isn't the greatest power of literature apparent in how it lives on after we have read it?

I loved it!Always wanted to read The Waste Land!