The Waste Land

There are some incredible passages in “The Waste Land” that make it a poem everyone should read. The first few lines beginning with “April is the cruelest month...” (which is one reason the book club chose it for April's book) and on to the excellently rendered Game of Chess (section 2) throw off fantastic images juxtaposed with dead-on conversation snippits that pop up in your mind after you've put the text down.

Our group had an interesting discussion about references to other works we've read (“Paradise Lost,” “The Odyssey,” etc.). There was some controversy about whether Eliot truly believed in hope through resurrection (I came out on the “no” side due to the first few lines and the following:

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Daffodils! Tulips! Fluffy little chicks! That's more Wordsworth's speed, no? “The Waste Land” presents a bleak, post World-War-1, post Spanish Influenza melange. Of course, T.S. was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and trouble with wifey (the latter an inspiration for section 3) on top of external factors. It's hard to believe the author also the author of “Old Possums Book of Practical Cats,” the inspiration for the long-running musical, “Cats.”

I do think that the deluge of literary references only a handful of people in the world could understand detract from what is certainly a work of art. The Norton critical edition is recommended for those who want to delve further behind the curtain: it is chock-full of both source material and criticism (positive and negative) that fleshes out the poem for the great unwashed.