The Wasteland

eliot's poem-masterpiece

it's said that The Wasteland is the poem that changed the way people saw poetry.

people began to see poetry as difficult.

and yeah, it's a fucking difficult poem.

it started this bullshit way of looking at poetry as an academic endeavour.

you have to study shakespeare, greek literature, the bible, Dante, Aquinas... blahdy blah etc

just to be able to understand what eliot is getting at.

but poetry is for the people, right? it comes from somewhere pure and simple

distilled life

little crystals of meaning and "truth" and beauty and ugliness and pain

no ACADEMIA

so fuck eliot right?

no, fuck YOU

i hate that argument.

why shouldn't eliot be able to do this?

it's just as valid as any other poem.

sure, overall it might've had a negative effect on the way people look at poetry.

eliot didn't set out to make poetry some elitist, academic bullshit.

all eliot was doing was sitting down to write a fucking good poem.

and he did.

how he did so and who is able to understand it and what it did is secondary

to his inspiration and desire to just write a poem.

can we really hold people responsible for the effects their accomplishments have on the world when the world is so fucked up and unable to handle things?

we must never fear putting things out into the world, no matter how ruined they will eventually become.

because that disaster, that evolution of meaning and perspective becomes a part of the poem itself.

nothing is ever done.