it's just a waste land now

[oh_lorelei]

The saturation of allusions used in The Waste Land presents an interesting question about a poet's motivation for writing and the intentions in creating and sharing one's work. Eliot's chosen strategy of writing footnotes to accompany his poem was compared to two other methods of dealing with the writer/reader relationship: leaving allusions out

Comments

[melsc]

Ha ha. Great picture. I agree with you there are so many allusions in the poem. Can you imagine how in-depth Eliot was when writing this work of art? I am curious as to how long it took for him to compose it. Of course he did receive help from Ezra Pound-"Il miglior fabbro".

[lad_56]

You bring up many good points with all the questions regarding "What does this say about their motives? How might this affect their popularity?" I think we've read so much variety of poems that we're looking much deeper into the poems and questioning them to a greater level than before.
But it's interesting to note what is the poet's motive(s) and whether this would affect their popularity. When you mentioned your questions, I thought about artists whose motives may seem down right strange and/or very peculiar. I mean, what could some artists have been thinking and why would they have chosen such a subject matter or medium and/or style..?
Sometimes we all want a clear cut picture of things but at the same time we want something that is not so clear and obvious. This poem, for me at least, has made me think kind of outside the box. It's one of those poems that functions as something other than a form of 'entertainment' or just a simple read.
...And neat image by the way!

[roger_kuin]

If you were to read it (preferably aloud) without knowing the allusions, wouldn't it still be a great poem? Just a weird great poem, perhaps? I think it would still be damned impressive.
Btw, another .......... Oogly! This time I'll let you spot it yourself.

As Voltaire did not say: SQUASH THE OOGLY.

[oh_lorelei]

booo. I spot an oogly in the first line, but I am too tired and confused to figure out how to phrase it properly... why can't there be a gender-neutral possessive pronoun?!
... Okay, I'm changing it to 'the' and 'one'.