Prufrock and T.S. Eliot

As I began the column “Poets Who Make Us Better” for Interlitq (The International Poetry Quarterly) T.S. Eliot  came to mind – not because his poetry led us out of the wistfulness of romanticism into the  honesty of modernism (which it did), but because, in the United States, my high school English teacher forced our small class to read the “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” 

Although Eliot wrote the poem from the perspective of an old-fashioned, socially-inept, aging man, the poet himself was a college student, not much older than the baffled teens who studied his work. At the time, of course, I had no idea what the poem meant, especially since it began with a quote from Dante’s Inferno! Nevertheless, the opening lines in English invited me into a new experience, and, immediately, Eliot’s skillful use of figurative language startled me into something I’d never thought about before: Poetry can be brilliant!

Lines from the first verse give a glint of that poetic brilliance:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table.

Remember: I said “poetic brilliance,” which has little, if anything, to do with poetic prettiness.

Regardless, if you have ever had the nauseating experience of being “etherized,” you may recall the fog accompanying that older form of anesthesia, which, thank God, is no longer in use, except among residents of countries who can’t afford the newer, pricier ways of getting a patient ready for the surgery that inevitably follows.

So, from the start, Eliot invites us to accompany him before gesturing with a hand-sweep across the sky to show a hazy grey evening that contributes to the dismal mood. The “half-deserted streets” and “cheap hotels” add to the gloominess before the poem jolts our sensibilities with a precise, concise, and, yes, brilliant simile that depicts a city scene:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Insightful phrasing like that does not come from one’s imagination, but from the outer sight of what’s actually present. This highly observant “nowness” is where Eliot had a turn at altering the course of  poetic flow in literary history.

Before he began to write for publication, reams of poems had been written to “my lady, my love.” Or, poets had painted idyllic landscapes flowering with nostalgia, or they addressed abstract matters having little to do with everyday lives. But like an interesting (albeit shy) tour guide, Prufrock invited us to accompany him on a journey.

Once the speaker of the poem reached his destination, Prufrock began paying close attention to a particular movement that caught his eye:

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

Frankly, I would like to walk around, talking of Michelangelo and maybe Dante too, but Prufrock is clearly not in the mood. Instead, his glance shifts, drifting toward another movement that catches his attention:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.

Oh, to be that observant and write such amazing metaphors! And yet, Prufrock himself evokes pity.  He goes on to speak of the time needed for people to do whatever they will in life, while recognizing that he himself wastes a lot of time by being mired in uncertainty:

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

As he turns in on himself (which high school students are also apt to do!) Prufrock reveals his self-doubts – from thinning hair to, ironically, being unable to express himself and, therefore, being misunderstood and likely to misunderstand others. But, instead of saying, “I feel so insignificant,” he shows that by saying:

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Prufrock’s indictment against himself most likely felt true for Eliot too, and perhaps even urged him toward his poetic greatness. But, as this poem unfolds, Prufrock continues to observe people while trying to figure out where he (and maybe Eliot) might fit in. Eventually this led to the troubling question:

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

At first, the question seems rather egotistical, but, in light of Prufrock’s insecurities, that assessment dims. For, in the decades following the high school student I was and college student Eliot was, I’m convinced the question “Do I dare?” occasionally haunts those of us who want to make a discernible difference in the world.

Do I dare to set things right? Do I dare try to make life better for someone or something somewhere? Do we dare to pray, to hope, to take a chance on the unknown? Eliot did.

Caught between his uncertainties and his calling, between his life in America and in Europe, and between two world wars, the poet dared to expand his poetic sight by exploring the inner self, the impact of social confinement, the quality of time, the literary edges of poetry, and the spiritual struggles we all face – and embrace or deny.

The chances Eliot dared to take earned him a Nobel Prize in literature as well as the honor of being a pioneer in the modern movement of poetry and, ultimately, of having an appreciated place in the classroom of my high school, which I now appreciate too.

by Mary Harwell Sayler

originally published in “Poets Who Make Us Better” column on Interlitq

…

Poetry Revision: Less can bring more to a poem

One of my favorite poems came about as a poet re-envisioned a scene he had originally tried to capture in 30 lines. Since those lines did not begin to show what he saw, he tore up the poem and, six months later, tried again. Instead of using more words, however, the poet wrote a poem of half the original length, but that version still did not show readers what he wanted them to see. Another six months went by as he looked, not for more words, but for the essence of the scene – the color, the beauty, the movement, the energy, and so, one year after he had first noticed a bouquet of lovely faces at the train station in 1911 Paris, Ezra Pound completed this poem in two exquisite lines:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals, on a wet, black bough.

Pound talks about his initial vision and his re-vision process in an essay posted on the Internet by Modern American Poetry. That webpage, which is well worth reading, also includes essays, literary criticism, and commentaries by various poets and poetry critics on the poem and the poet’s brilliant choice of words.

If you go on to read the biography of Pound located on the website, too, you might wonder why this free-spirited, free-willed, visually-oriented man became such good friends with the anxious, cerebral, musically-oriented poet T.S. Eliot. Perhaps being unlike each other drew them into an unlikely friendship as they became the ideal poet-peers for offering each other feedback on their poems.

For example, Eliot counted on Pound to say what he really thought about The Waste Land even though he pounded home the importance of being fresh and not competing with couplets that, a couple of centuries earlier, Alexander Pope had handled with greater skill!

Again, the Modern American Poetry site posts an essay discussing the revision of Eliot’s famous book-length poem The Waste Land, and larger bookstores often stock an edition of the poem that includes annotations by Ezra Pound. Studying the comments and suggestions that one brilliant poet made to another provides an excellent mini-course in revision.


© 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler
All rights reserved.


~~

Poets who shaped poetry provide good reading for NaPoMo and beyond

This last day of National Poetry Month can begin a new or renewed commitment to poetic excellence in your own work as you resolve to read some of our most influential poets before the next NaPoMo. At first that may sound a little like a homework chore, but if you’re beyond the public school years, you might be as surprised as I was when I re-read and totally got those “Say what?” poems from high school days.

Since my favorite example gave me the shock of understanding and actually liking the once-baffling poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” let’s start with Pru’s poet-maker.

T.S. Eliot – Recently reviewed in The New York Times, this Nobel Prize poet reflected less than noble views as a man of the times who recorded what he saw. A long list of still-familiar quotations may give you a truer perspective of his perspective, but regardless, notice the brilliant metaphors in Prufrock, then read the poem aloud to hear the amazing musicality. Also, contemplate the multiple meanings in another must-read, “Journey of the Magi.” If you like Eliot’s poems, as I do, you might want to check out his essays on poetry too.

Ezra Pound – A friend of Eliot, but frankly not mine, this controversial figure and founder of the Imagist movement wrote essays about poetry, got arrested for his fascistic views, and was eventually declared insane. Acclaimed though he continues to be, I never connected with Pound or his poetry, yet he wrote one of my all-time favorite poems in two exquisite lines, “In a Station of the Metro.”

Robert Frost – Despite a whirl of poetic movements moving around him, Robert Frost kept writing in traditional forms and meter, winning four Pulitzers in the process. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reminds me to say that most people warmed to Frost, whose poems these are we think we know, but if you read his work again and aloud, you might be surprised how the possibilities for interpretation continue to snowball.

Gerard Manley Hopkins – This inventor of tightly compressed “sprung rhythm” became a Jesuit priest who wrote religious poetry of high literary quality that continues to be appreciated today. For example, “Windhover” orchestrates a symphony of sound echoes, and “God’s Grandeur” pictures the shining of shook foil, but my favorite is the insightful, quietly sensitive response to a young child in “Spring and Fall.”

Emily Dickinson – Reclusive for reasons people still speculate about, the real Em comes through her recently published letters and the museum that honors her. Numerous websites post her poems too, but as you read her work, listen for the music of a traditional ballad form and look for dashes of punctuation that show her dash of thought.

Walt Whitman – Known as a liberator of free verse in America, Whitman liberated lines of poetry and lines of thought in the expansive, inclusive lists or catalogs in his poems, many of which can be found on the Internet. Like Pound and other well-known poets who invented or re-invented poetic forms and styles, Whitman self-published his early work, including a slim volume that kept growing and growing as Leaves of Grass.

This list could keep growing, too, but not begin to touch the hundreds, indeed, thousands of years of great poets who greatly influenced poetry – poets such as Horace, Sappho, Basho, Aristotle, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Donne, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Yeats, and Auden. Hopefully, you’ll read them all!

If you already have a favorite, you’re once again invited to add the name of an influential poet or poem in the Comments section below.


~~

(c) 2011, Mary Harwell Sayler