/lit/ - Literature

Put Eliot away, read later in life. Pick up again, you will love.

fuck eliot, Keats is what you want baby.

just ask this guy.

>>3961156
so his merit is based on burn outs who have "weathered the storms" if life already? He wrote Prufrock at age 27, doesn't seem like a long enough time period to have truly experienced the hardships of life.

Why don't you read a real poet?

all the romantics are inherently better then him. so why is he popular?

>muh spiritual bankruptcy
If this does nothing for you, then Eliot's not your guy. Walk away from him for a while.

>>3961203
>inherently
Any poet who believes that he possess a more comprehensive soul than the layman is inherently flawed.

>>3961185
You don't need to experience the hardships of life to adequately depict them in verse. Eliot's just a talented writer.

>>3961193
>precocious teenager detected

>>3961149
eliot is special to me because in the hollow men he created a vision of hell i could believe in.

>>3961149
Personally I love Eliot just for the sound and the beauty of it. I haven't put much thought into the meaning of it.

>>3961219
Meaning doesn't matter in poetry. You're doing it right.

>>3961224
poetry is more than just a couple of verses that sound nice when said together.

>>3961185

i'm 27 and i've been in 2 wars, been in love a couple times, been to a few countries in south america, europe, and asia, and i saw hugh jackman at LAX the day he hosted the oscars

tell me i aint seen some shit

>>3961224

>>3961227
>implying it is
If you wanna express an explicit, concrete meaning, write prose. Otherwise, fuck off. Poetry lives and breathes in images, in sensory input magnified by metaphor.

>>3961239
metaphors require meaning to exist.

>implying poetry can't contain symbolic meaning

>>3961248
Didn't imply that. What I did imply is that symbolic meaning is damn near pointless if it isn't wrapped in aesthetically-appealing form or adorned with intriguing imagery.

>>3961250
>aesthetically-appealing form or adorned with intriguing imagery.

please define 'aesthetically-appealing' and 'intriguing imagery'. examples are encouraged.

>>3961256
Quick reply ate my painstakingly-transcribed definitions and examples. In any case, I can rarely finish arguing for or against a position regarding poetry without slipping into poetry and generally fucking off. So let's just look at two of Eliot's poems. Burnt Norton (a poem I largely enjoy) initiates with a stanza full of time-related abstractions. They are undoubtedly intriguing, if dull. However, Eliot doesn't fully grab my attention until he brings the bird and the rose-bowl into the equation. So perhaps this is a personal thing. Prufrock, which we've already touched on in this thread, dives straight into imagery. The "etherized patient" simile is scratched into my memory. Do poems that emphasize symbolic meaning have value? As much value as a given reader affords them, sure. Also, the academics of the society to which the given reader belongs. Poems that lean too far into meaning-heavy territory, however, tend to make me roll my eyes. Whoopee for me, I guess.

"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.

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.

Try reading The Wasteland. You don't know what you're talking about.

>>3963462
The Wasteland is all about spiritual bankruptcy, which is a theme that the Op mentioned. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about lol.

>"Unreal city..."
>The Young Man carbuncular fucking the typists
>So spiritually depraved!!!

That's The Wasteland for you.

>>3963470
typist****

OP is a gigantic faggot

>>3961209
>Gertrude Stein
hehe

thread made me re-read some Eliot works. forgot how much I fucking loved Eliot.

>>3963470

>The Wasteland is all about...

No one knows what The Wasteland is all about. It's got dozens of interpretations.

>>3963507
>>>/b/

>>3963963
This.

Yeah, just re-read Prufrock, and he could really string those words together, huh? Lord, there's like 30-40 individual images here that are just unforgettable as image or as rhythm.

What kind of poem has this:
>I should have been a pair of ragged claws
>Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
Is not only so great to have this bit, but also to have it not be unanimously and obviously the best lines?
Is so great that the greatness of any one stanza is subsumed by hit after hit until the poem entire simply washes over the reader, in a coherent wave, inexhaustible brilliance in the space of 150-some lines?

I could easily hear some criticism that Prufrock is singleminded and expressing one simple thing, and I might even agree. If you're not in the mood for that kind of a deconstruction it might fall flat.

But as a musician, as someone with a love of language and that footman at my door, the leering "full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse" in my head? Yeah, Prufrock is the truth.

>>3961227
No it's not. Poetry is just pure aesthetical pleasure.

>>3961239

Then why not just see a painting or listen to music? If you want to describe the visible, painting is a far superior art; if you want to describe the invisible; compose.

>>3965622
Painting is not "a far superior art" when it comes to the description of sensory experiences. You don't know what you are talking about.

read the french symbolists and post-symbolists who influenced him.

they are all better than him by a lot

Ugh OP, you sound like a pseudo-intellectual twat to dismiss T.S. Eliot as 'teenage, edgy shit'
God, shit like this makes me angry

>>3966919
Also I'd spit in your face if I'd ever see you in real life

>>3966919
>Elliot, T.S

>Edgy, Teenage shit

I think you might be on to something here.

sometimes, monsieur, the matter is not of how deep the dick penetrates, but rather with how much torque and twist it naggingly reminds itself in small bursts, and yet more, in even the biggoted of corners

>>3961227
Exactly. Those who oppose what you just has said are the ones who enjoy poems of old guys talking about one night stands. Repulsive.

With poetry you can also talk about your dreams and meaningful things. Don't claim your subjetive opinion as truth when is so horrible, please.

>>3961239
>If you wanna express an explicit, concrete meaning, write prose.
The words have all the purpose that you want to give them.I don't want to be Ortega y Gasset, so I try to express myself in a beatiful way, thank you. Go back to your impresionist paintings, faggot.

I'll enjoy expresionism and beatiful words that express images AND meanings

>>3967673
I have absolutely no idea what you just said, but don't talk shit about Prufrock!