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I know you’ve been there done this. Try to sit still and feign interest while the person across from you seems to ramble on and on into the apocalyptic future. And you wonder if you locked the door at home.
An image of somebody probably just popped into your mind. Right? Better not be an image of me. I’ll hunt you down and read modernist masterpieces of poetry till your ears bleed.
And I mean the kind that ramble on and on and on…
Yeah, they’re a real thing. And that brings me back to where I started this post. And it started because of a series of web links that took me to memory lane. Far back down memory lane to my high school English composition and literature class.
That’s where we went through an in-depth study of poetry by American poets who were considered brilliant. Or geniuses. Or poetic masters. And back then, since I was an enthralled newbie poet wannabe, I read some of their works with somewhat awestruck interest.
One such writer was Thomas Stearns Eliot, aka: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). And the poem we dived into was his most famous work: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” A rhyme of over 1000 words. Back then I found it fascinating that Mr. Eliot could write a poem that long. Much less make it interesting.
Poetry critics and critiques call it one of the “landmarks in the history of modern literature.”
I just re-read it this week. And I call it the obvious musings of a college student. And, according to records, that’s what he was when he wrote the poem.
It’s cool how age and experience (refined with wisdom) can temper and tweak your perspective. As a high school student, I focused on length and meter and word connections. But as a silver-haired, old man, I can now focus on what in the world T.S. actually said. And, it’s just a collection of his thoughts.
I’m not impressed with his meter or his word connections. And it’s WAY too long. Because it’s almost narcissistic in its long journey to basically nowhere.
But I’m not sharing this as a poetry critique.
Far from that. No, I think what’s much more important is how once again the Truth and power, found in God’s word, is evident even in the regular things of life. Like poetry and literature. And reading and writing.
One of the most famous wisdom verses in the Bible, Proverbs 4:7, says “Wisdom is the principal thing.” And it also says to “get understanding.” Those are crucial, now more than ever in your life, because they can help you spot a fraud. Or a scammer. Or even a mistaken masterpiece.
I’ve read that T.S. Eliot converted to Anglicanism in 1927 and wrote “Ash Wednesday” not long after. It’s an even longer poem. And it supposedly is “an account of the struggle of finding faith.” But I don’t recommend you read much into it, if you ever ramble on through it. Because it has a dazed and confused feel.
Anyway…
Just thought I’d ramble on about the merits (and demerits) of poetry with you today. Here’s that first one, from T.S. Eliot:
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
So, in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
And to roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old, I grow old…
>I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
And I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Wow!
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