In the new fantasy novel Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, The Waste Land is considered a guidebook for journeying to hell. T.S. Eliot is reimagined as someone like Dante who went to hell and back and wrote about it. It’s really fun how she turned details from the poem into a scene in the book.
What I'd say is that the sled run hits different. I mean, Germans overheard . . . in the age of Instagram, is this what the poet should be doing? Here as elsewhere, I think the great modernists were critics, in the sense that their innovations were dependent on the cultural heritage of their audience. Today, to write, we don't have the same luxury.
I just came across this at Poetry Foundation about The Waste Land and find it helpful. "Cities are built out of the ruins of previous cities, as The Waste Land is built out of the remains of older poems.”
As a young poet, I wrote a series of "After" poems, using texts by various poets as a starting point. I remember saying at the time that working (reworking) Eliot's lines was like trying to build a wall with bricks of lead.
I think today, now that "The Waste Land" is no longer an unapproachable monument before which we must all kneel, that the poem really benefits from being approached as just another (great) poem than as the be-all and end-all of High Modernism. The Postmodern movement certainly made Eliot's use of a collage technique much more familiar.
I read the whole poem out loud to my wife a few months back, and she was struck mainly by how musical it was. It really needs to be heard out loud, with different accents and intonations for the different characters who inhabit the poem.
I was introduced to The Waste Land as a teen-ager with the recording (on vinyl!) of Eliot himself reading it. No better way in I think. Notes and exegesis can come later. https://share.google/IH61IKljukLXQAmBa seems to be it.
The brilliant use of "different voices" and cinematic cutting, thanks in part to Ezra Pound, can scarcely be imitated without crying out, "imitation of Eliot."
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Mark
In the new fantasy novel Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, The Waste Land is considered a guidebook for journeying to hell. T.S. Eliot is reimagined as someone like Dante who went to hell and back and wrote about it. It’s really fun how she turned details from the poem into a scene in the book.
All of literature is built on the waste land of its predecessors.
True for TSE, Shakespeare (Ovid), Joyce (Homer & Shakespeare), Dante (Virgil and an entire literary universe around his time).
We stand on these glorious ruins.
Damn this was good.
What I'd say is that the sled run hits different. I mean, Germans overheard . . . in the age of Instagram, is this what the poet should be doing? Here as elsewhere, I think the great modernists were critics, in the sense that their innovations were dependent on the cultural heritage of their audience. Today, to write, we don't have the same luxury.
I just came across this at Poetry Foundation about The Waste Land and find it helpful. "Cities are built out of the ruins of previous cities, as The Waste Land is built out of the remains of older poems.”
I read Joseph's essay at First Things. Glad to know about it.
As a young poet, I wrote a series of "After" poems, using texts by various poets as a starting point. I remember saying at the time that working (reworking) Eliot's lines was like trying to build a wall with bricks of lead.
I think today, now that "The Waste Land" is no longer an unapproachable monument before which we must all kneel, that the poem really benefits from being approached as just another (great) poem than as the be-all and end-all of High Modernism. The Postmodern movement certainly made Eliot's use of a collage technique much more familiar.
I read the whole poem out loud to my wife a few months back, and she was struck mainly by how musical it was. It really needs to be heard out loud, with different accents and intonations for the different characters who inhabit the poem.
I was introduced to The Waste Land as a teen-ager with the recording (on vinyl!) of Eliot himself reading it. No better way in I think. Notes and exegesis can come later. https://share.google/IH61IKljukLXQAmBa seems to be it.
All "how to read a poem" advice could really be boiled down to one line: "Marie, Marie, hold on tight."
The brilliant use of "different voices" and cinematic cutting, thanks in part to Ezra Pound, can scarcely be imitated without crying out, "imitation of Eliot."