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Trevor's Reviews > The Waste Land and Other Poems
The Waste Land and Other Poems
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Eliot is such a pompous old fart, how could anyone not love him? When I was still in high school if you wanted to be in the group of people who had any pretensions as ‘intellectuals� or whatever else it was we had pretensions of � Eliot was de rigueur. I know large slabs of this poem by heart and when I worked as a house painter would quote it at length at the top of my voice when I ran out of Irish songs to sing while I rolled the walls � which probably misses the point of the poem, but I love how it feels in my mouth � like having your mouth full of chocolates and then coffee and then brandy, no, better, Cointreau.
There is something Romantic about this poem, despite it being the definitive Modern poem � all that stuff about, “The chair she sat in…� could be straight from Byron or Wordsworth.
I love the jokes, the sex in a punt and the pocket full of currants and I still love all of the horrible sexual adventures that are all ‘whip it in, whip it out and wipe it� for the men and so totally unsatisfying for the women. And that bit about fore-suffering all enacted on this same divan or bed with the wee typist woman and her drying combinations, is just so damn good. One final, patronising kiss and gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit.
All the same, this is one of the masterworks of the language, some of it still forms a lump in my throat as the currents rise and fall and I pass through all the stages of my youth and age.
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t quite agree with him now that ‘if you want to read me, learn my language� � pretty much meaning learn the whole of European poetry to read a single poem � but very young men find this is exactly the sort of thing that draws one to Nietzsche � and Eliot was always my favourite right-wing wanker.
There is something Romantic about this poem, despite it being the definitive Modern poem � all that stuff about, “The chair she sat in…� could be straight from Byron or Wordsworth.
I love the jokes, the sex in a punt and the pocket full of currants and I still love all of the horrible sexual adventures that are all ‘whip it in, whip it out and wipe it� for the men and so totally unsatisfying for the women. And that bit about fore-suffering all enacted on this same divan or bed with the wee typist woman and her drying combinations, is just so damn good. One final, patronising kiss and gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit.
All the same, this is one of the masterworks of the language, some of it still forms a lump in my throat as the currents rise and fall and I pass through all the stages of my youth and age.
Okay, so maybe I wouldn’t quite agree with him now that ‘if you want to read me, learn my language� � pretty much meaning learn the whole of European poetry to read a single poem � but very young men find this is exactly the sort of thing that draws one to Nietzsche � and Eliot was always my favourite right-wing wanker.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
January 10, 2008
– Shelved
June 27, 2010
– Shelved as:
literature
June 27, 2010
– Shelved as:
poetry
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Thanks Alexis and also Mike - sorry I didn't thank you at the time...
One day I should do a proper review of this, Mosca. It is really less a poem and more a symphony. The music of the thing is like something from Mahler - hard to hear the first time you listen, but that haunts you for years and years after.
I haven't read Eliot since High School, Trevor. But I love your analysis.
eliot had his neuroses. but all that is besides the point. it's too easy to give him flak for his stuff on 'modernism'. I think there are specific structural constraints when the modernists came to deal with emotion. I don't mean to whore out my (hopefully) future supervisor, but I do think he deals very well with our perception of TS Eliot: It's a good apologia of sorts.
Tried to read in School under the tutelage of a very Able teacher ...tried and tried keeling over . Now 2 and 1/2 decades I am reading / comprehending.Your piece gives a different path to wasteland.
Did he end up being your supervisor, Lorraine? I've started reading it, but have too much else to read� Sandipan - someone once said that reading the Waste Land is a bit like looking at a huge painting but with your face about two inches away from the surface. It is really hard to get far enough back to see what is going on. And the references are endless - like the first line referencing the first line of The Canterbury Tales, but also the first stanza being the same length as the first stanza of the Tales too. I can never tell if you are supposed to read the poem or view it as a kind of treasure hunt. But there are lines in it that are so stunningly beautiful and whole sections that are deeply moving - the whole section on the typist is like that - it is hard not to love this poem.
It's great to read a review by someone who clearly really understands Eliot and his work. I think this is the best review of Eliot I have read!
Amusingly enough, I was quoting this to someone last night in reference to the Australian Prime Minister - I said that people think he is alive, but actually, it is just a current undersea causing his body to rise and fall. A useful wee poem to have read.
If my memory serves me right, T S Eliot dedicated The Hollow Men to your PM as well. Hopefully a vision will tell him to give a knighthood to George Bush and that will be the final straw the public can take...
Every day I wake up thinking he can't do anything stupider than he did yesterday - and every day I'm proven wrong.
I'm curious to know. Who said this, "If you want to read me, learn my language"
it is me paraphrasing TSE: but here he says pretty much that in his own words:"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities."
My version wins for brevity, his on every other score.
Your's wins for me. It's apt to say when people don't understand my simple mediocre poetry. Of course his version isn't imperfect in any way but in this day and age he'd never be heard. No one has the time.
Brilliant review, Trevor.
excellent and enjoyable review
Quite possibly one of the best reviews I’ve ever read. Your humor-laced insight on TSE and his work was engaging.
T.S Elliot was a great thinker and a subtle expressionist, but sorry to say, without bias, he was not a great Poet. Jonathan Swift also wanted to be a great poet, but instead he turned out to be a great humorist. I read some of Elliot's books on poetry. I mean no offence, but he was trying to be a poet by imitating the poets whom he analyzed.
I love that you can say that “without bias�. Fabulous.
Trevor wrote: "I love that you can say that “without bias�. Fabulous."I read his poetry, so yes, without bias. Your review, however, well... pure bias and misleading. Some readers might think T.S. Elliot was a great poet. In Denmark we love H.C. Andersen for his fairy tales, but no one will ever say he was a poet, even though he was a poet, why? because he was not a great poet. Authors are remembered by their great achievements and merits only. What do you think about John Milton? Most people don't even know that 'Paradise Lost' was a political Essay and that it had no real message apart from advocating for Christianity. Milton was both a politician and a Christian, but i never judged 'Paradise Lost' on the above bias. It was written superbly, but for me it lacked (novel) message... apologies for the digression 🙏
Blake was a Great Poet
Poe was a Great Poet
Shakespeare was a Great Poet
Swift, Andersen and Elliot were mediocre poets
Thank you for your objective insights.
Trevor wrote: "Thank you for your objective insights."You're welcome
Blake, Poe and Shakespeare all exhibited marvelous poetry with art and wisdom combined...
Pacem in Terris 🙏
Being still fairly young and impressionable � in terms of my poetry appreciation, that is � I've had some conflict, in as far as I like quite a bit of Eliot and various other modernists, but am also aware that a lot this stuff was intended to be so impenetrable as to keep plebeian state-schoolers like myself from poking their noses into books that they didn't belong in. But, I guess with the benefit of time passing we can now all enjoy the "right-wing wanker" and his peers, at least for the moments of brilliance that shine out brightly � and democratically � enough so that even those who haven't had a classical education can appreciate them.