How do you feel about T.S. Eliot?

[raccoon]

While I sort of like some of his stuff, THE WASTE LAND, ALFRED PRUFROCK, I also think he's pretentious. It seems to me awfully pretentious to write poems and throw in quotes from foreign languages here and there. It's like saying, look how smart I am. And Eliot is, I'm sure, by no means the only writer to come across like that.

[southpaw]

1. I majored in Lit

And Eliot was claimed by both the Americans and the Brits. Let's just say I was beset with Eliot for a significant part of my life.

Definitely erudite. I did enjoy Prufrock... the Waste Land to a lesser degree.

I seem to agree with your assessment, and I think that Henry James also wrote in a difficult manner just because he could. Likewise James Joyce, William Faulkner and Virginia Woolfe.

[raccoon]

2. Yeah, while I like some of Faulkner, especially THE SOUND AND

THE FURY, because I can identify with the Compsons so much, I still think maybe he should've been waterboarded for writing such long sentences. :silly:

James and Joyce, esp. Joyce, IMO, were both tedious. Woolfe I haven't read.

[ulysses]

3. loved that stuff when I was into being a Tortured Young Man.

A little goes a very long way these days, though.

[Goblinmonger]

4. There are two distinct Eliots

1. The Eliot of Prufrock and Waste Land
2. The Eliot of the horrible cat poems.

You could blame the descent on moving to England, finding god, or something else, but who would believe that the same person that wrote the beauty that is Prufock also wrote Cats. Yeesh.

As to the allusions. I like them. But, then again, I'm an English teacher. With some exceptions (the stanza from The Inferno before Prufrock) you don't need to know the allusions to appreciate the work but they add a deeper understanding of the theme. I also like James Joyce, so maybe I'm just weird like that.

[raccoon]

7. Oh, yeah, I forgot about Macavity! I like that too. nt

[old mark]

5. I tend to think less of Eliot till I find one of the little gems

in his work that make up for the game playing.
I find Faulkner pretty much a waste of time, same with Joyce.

mark

(FWIW: I am by no means an academic, but I have publisned about a dozen poems and several other pieces.)

[zanne]

6. Looking back from 2008, it does seem that way.

But I love his poetry and I think it's pretty pure. After all, poets aren't supposed to spell it all out for us.