Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Not so bad


Crap! Forgot about this until now. Oops.

Anyway, I detract my prior remarks about “The Wasteland.” It is far better than I remember, but I am also reading it in a much different context with significantly less pressure. I actually enjoyed it and was able to really pay close attention to the detail instead of constantly trying to wrap my head around every little thing he was trying to say, or what I thought that might have been.  When I read it the first time, too, I had been warned of how “difficult” it was, so that seeped into my brain and made me gloss over.
The vividness struck me, and I especially liked part II. A Game of Chess, because it seemed to really be telling a story. It was a back and forth and it was interesting to see how Eliot played with that.

As a few people have already mentioned, the repetition was interesting to see, especially in the context of this week’s exercise. It broke up the lines of the poem and interrupted what was going on at the center, so it made me a little uneasy, but that’s what made me like it and made it work.

Just as a side note with really little significance, I love the lines at the end of the first stanza in part V:
He who was living is now dead 
We who were living are now dying 
With a little patience

^Irrelevant. 

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