Showing posts with label t. s. eliot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label t. s. eliot. Show all posts

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Wasteland

I have been reading a little of T.S. Eliot lately.  I think poetry has a bad rap.  If you say "i like poetry" at a football party, cornhole tournament, or other normal get-together, you may get some weird looks.  Like you are nerdy or something.  But that is wrong.
I am going to say something that goes against every fiber of me, but American poets are awesome. They are tough, manly and cool.  I say that it goes against my fiber because I love the Brits.  I love Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Lewis, Dickens, and the list goes on.  But when it comes to poetry, I really love Robert Service and T. S. Eliot both who were Americans, although Service was born in England.  Granted, Eliot moved to England later in life and became a British citizen (I think,anyway, according to internet info)
I realized something though.  Eliot speaks the same language, the same heart song as Robert Smith of the Cure.  My husband is either rolling his eyes or laughing at me right now.  But seriously.

I like Eliot because although he was a Christian, he did not want to be a "christian" poet.  He wanted to be a great poet of the English language.  But somehow his beliefs seeped through his poetry, I think because of his honesty.  He wasn't superficial or fake.

My new favorite Eliot poem (nothing will beat Hollow Men, although I do like the Magi poem too) is   The Waste Land

When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone.


and later on...


In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is an empty chapel, on the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.


It just seems to have the same feel as the Pornography album by the Cure....
One Hundred Years (one of my favorite songs)  here are some of the lyrics to the epic song...  Faith is another album that is similar.


Stroking your hair as the patriots are shot
Fighting for freedom on television
Sharing the world with slaughtered pigs
Have we got everything?
She struggles to get away . . .





I did not do so well with cool pics and links on this post, so I will end with a depressing Cure song/video

Sunday, November 27, 2011

T.S. Eliot Poem


The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.