The Wasteland: Unpopular Opinion Time

Of course it's easy to see how The Wasteland is a collage. I felt like I couldn't read three lines without flipping back to the footnotes to understand what the author was trying to say. It's unfortunate that, as modern readers, we can't fully understand the context of the poem as we read it. I actually became kind of frustrated at having to flip back to the footnotes just to understand the German. (I'm sure this is exactly what makes the poem so popular and layered and "classic" but it got on my nerves... a lot.) I'm not trying to say that copying this is a bad thing, certainly not. But it shouldn't stand as a warning of sorts. Like when Koby presented his collage that had the philosophy formula. I didn't think explaining the formula was necessary--it's an interesting layer to the collage and leaves it open for multiple interpretations. Having a line in another language does not always help interpretation. It requires research and translation. So, it should be considered very heavily before being added to a collage. (Which I'm sure Eliot did and finally decided pro-adding it in.)

That being said, if I finally gave up understanding everything, I did enjoy the poem at times. The seeming dialogue in II. A Game of Chess was really interesting to me. For some reason, this section of the poem was really uncanny to me. It's a conversation with no end goal. Neither speaker is responding to the other. I also liked Death by Water. The simple gravity of the poem is a tone I'd like to replicate.