Forum / In the Captain's Tower

Matt Dennison
Sep 13, 11:01pm

T.S. Eliot

All you have to do is say the name, hear it spoken, or read it on the page and the aura of near-biblical proportions fills the room with a warm and golden glow.

Now THIS, you say/think/mumble, THIS is real poetry by a real poet!

But I was glancing through a poetry website last night ("Read the Classics!"), went to his page, and there--after batting away the cartoon-me!pop-up--among the ads for cellphones, ring tones and screen savers, was The Love Song of J. Alfred, Gerontion, Preludes and, dare I say it?

THE WASTELAND(!)

and it pretty much seemed like something someone had written and posted on some workshop site.

Disconcerting, that...

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 14, 06:53am

"The tassels I use are of the very best quality. If one of them should get all wrinkly, or some of the spangles fall off? Why, I just throw them away and get me a new pair. Presentation is EVERYTHING, honey. Ya' won't cathc me in some dive in Poughkeepsie. No sir. Just like you'll never see T.S. Eliot in some dime novel rag. What's that? 'Course I know who T.S. Eliot is. I got class in places you never dreamed of, sugar."

Gypsie Rose Lee (Stripper & un bas-bleu, when she wore anything at all.)

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 14, 06:54am

Catch, not cathc. Damn these uneditable forum pages anyway!

Sam Rasnake
Sep 14, 07:15am

Any workhsop that produced "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" would be a good group to join - then or now.

Matt Dennison
Sep 14, 10:25am

Perhaps its was the ad for classmates.com that put me off...

stephen hastings-king
Sep 14, 12:19pm

It seems to me that the way to approach the Waste Land is by way of the edition that reproduces Pound's edits, which make it seem even more a workshop piece. I preferred Pound in any event back in the day. Up through the Pisan Cantos. Rock Drill finds Ez off the edge. But I digress.

I know alot of pale, sensitive and irritating ado-boys who've memorized Eliot---Prufrock in particular. It took me a while to recall that this is not Eliot's fault, much in the way that hearing Sargeant Pepper for the 3 millionth time is not that of the Beatles. So it took a while for me to dislike Prufrock independently of this unfortunate informal delivery system. But I found ways to do it.

And I suppose, but do not know, that the same kind of affinity of sensitive but irritating ado-boys with Prufrock spills over to the Waste Land. One result of this is that it now sounds like a workshop piece because it has come to be an aspect of the social rhetoric that allows for coherent passage through a particularly annoying phase of life, that of being a pale, sensitive ado-boy of the sort who thinks that schlock like Prufrock Speaks to the Heart of Things such that you memorize with the hope of reciting it in the context of some Seduction Ritual and with that making the Ritual, like everything else, into something that's all about you.

There's no doubt an equally annoying delivery system that is centered on the range of Others (from the viewpoint of a sensitive and annoying ado boy). This is demonstrated through the horrifying (but anecdotal) scenario of having the Object of Seduction recite Prufrock along with you rather than staying with the program and listening so as to be Impressed with your Giant Erudition.

This scenario enacts a confusion between Soul-mate and Rival.
That, my dears, is bad bad bad.
And so's Eliot.

Matt Dennison
Sep 14, 01:56pm

Interesting response, Stephen, and totally understandable. But goes to prove my point (not that that was/is your intention):

It's damn near impossible to read him free of preconceived, received, impressions: sense-of-obligation-to-worship, sense-of-obligation-to-demean, sense-of-obligation-to-fall-asleep...

and this, I feel, is because of how he's presented

(the teacher raises his/her eyebrows, instilling a visceral sense of fear and wonder and excitement in the aging children--for Eliot must not be presented to the *very* young: "Next week, T.S. Eliot (audible gasps of fear, for they have heard of this Eliot, from their elder companions) Now don't be afraid, children, I've traveled this road many times before. I know the pitfalls and dangers, but I swear on the eyes of Zeus that if we go slowly, and carefully, PAINFULLY SLOWLY, if need be, and need will be, availing ourselves of the prodigious notes I and other ordained flame-keepers have amassed through the ages, we shall emerge to light at the end of the day!)

But reading the words without benefit of being contained in a favorite book, without benefit of glowing and complex forward/introduction/notes/appendices/translations,

reading the words beneath ads for a Flatter Stomach in 7 Days!, You Too Can Be A Published Poet! Thinking of Returning To School?

reading the words in a big, flat, open font with the occasional typo...

reading the words without someone holding your hand so you don't run away from the scary words...

reading the words with no invisible violins playing in the background, well, it's innerestin'(imo).

eamon byrne
Sep 14, 09:16pm

Yes, there's 2 ways to respond to your original post, Matt, and Stephen's was one - to talk about Eliot. But I took another meaning from your post. It's not just Eliot you could have used as an example, it's anyone.

The thing is, we come to any text with prejudice. Either having been preconditioned to expect it to be "good", or similarly to expect it to be probably not good. We can never approach a piece of writing with an unprejudiced mind.

Two main things prejudice us: our knowledge of the writer, and the medium of the transmission. Compare: an expensive printed edition of a novel by a famous author, and a long website piece by an unknown writer that needs to be scrolled to be read.

These things precondition us to come to a text with respect. Respect is the precondition which tunes us in to the "goodness" of a text.

Maybe that's why reading the Eliot piece felt disconcerting: it came across as a piece by an anonymous writer. It's what the site gave to it - a simulacrum of anonymity.

Sam Rasnake
Sep 14, 10:19pm

Wow. I've decided not to let my 3rd grade teacher - and she was pretty bad ... mostly in my mind ... since there's no way she could be as bad as she is in my head ... influence how I read Poe. Or anyone else for that matter.

The grass is always greener. Or more brown. Or just plain dried up and blown away.

Interesting variations on a variation of theme here.

Matt Dennison
Sep 14, 11:04pm

Well, of course you're right, e-. Simply by the way parents say the word "sugar" with a great big smile and happy voice, or "cookie,"

"Wanna cookie? Yuuuummmmmmmm!"

we are trained to assume these are good things. Or, "Dirty! Bad, don't touch!"

The site in question seems to scrub away all preconceptions of sugar-dirt, however, with its naked presentation, and balance what's left of residual awe/fear/anticipatory-pleasure/hatred within a framework of the lowest common denominator ("Can You Answer The Phone?--Earn Money At Home!")

It's a funny juxtaposition, and quite liberating. The text appears as words on the page, of no more *inherent* interest or value than the ad for tooth whitener.

AS SUCH it approaches an essential simplicity that is not found elsewhere. BUT THEN AGAIN, a certain level of the pleasure found in poetry (and it does exist, folks) IS the surrounding brouhaha of history, acclaim, erudition and "explanation."

But what we all know to be true of all texts I feel is somehow even more of an onus for ol' TS, for better or worse.

Hemingway, Shakespeare and all the other big boys all struggle under the weight of their histories (as presented in class), but you'll find Shakespeare, for example, being read/taught/acted out quite early in the academic process, and for the most part enjoyed ("What ho!"). Most of us read The Old Man and the Sea somewhere between 8th and 12th grade without serious injury.

It's just the given sense that one must be prepared, strengthened in advance, wrapped in a coat of authorial calm, led by the hand, protected at all costs from blowing a brain-gasket... when it comes to "being exposed to" Eliot.

Which I think is ultimately a great disservice to the text.

Matt Dennison
Sep 14, 11:22pm

"Respect is the precondition which tunes us in to the "goodness" of a text."

I feel (though it's impossible, I know) that it is best to discover a text with NO preconceptions (impossible, I know, for the most part when young).

I found Crime & Punishment in the public library in the 5th grade. Thought it was a cool title. Enjoyed it very much (until he got religion...) without being told/warned that it was Good and that I should Respect it. It *was* good, and I *did* respect it, but that experience was between myself and the text.

In fact, I'm sure I would have been told not to read it if I had asked the librarian/teacher about the book.

That's the lovely part about old bookstores: a stage where you can act out the human desire to discover the new (to you) and the rare (to you).

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 15, 06:40am

Context dictates so much of what we learn when we are young. I might have had an ordinary life of the mind, learned to love the war and to covet all the other wonderful things the world was ready to give me, things like a cookie cutter job and a double wide in Georgia ... except for the influence of a magnificently sardonic, scolding librarian in the Ocean View Branch of the Norfolk Public Library System.

I was in about the fourth or fifth grade and, in the summertime, I would get into fits of subjective reading. That summer, Africa was the my passion and I was reading books written by the long gone 'white hunters' of Kenya, autobiographies and such.

One day, I checked out a book about a hunter whose specialty was hunting gorillas and walked it up to the counter. The matronly woman in charge had pince-nez glasses attached by a silver cord to a pin on her blouse and tightly bound hair reminiscent of the style made famous by Hollywood renditions of female Nazi camp guards ... and a matching, winsome personality.

She thumbed through the book and noticed a particularly graphic picture, one of those National Geographic sorts of pictures made famous by Woody Allen and Phillip Roth. I hadn't selected the book for pictures, but to read it ... but no matter ... it signaled to her the fact that THIS was a dangerous book, too dangerous for a pre-pubescent mind.

In a loud voice that brought the attendant stare of everyone in the library, she proceeded to let me know that MY card was that of a CHILD, and that THIS book was from the ADULT section. She came around, took my hand, and led me to the children's section, where all the books were stupid, dull, anthropomorphic celebrations of insipid delights that lead, ultimately, to drooling fantasies about bunny rabbits, talking turtles, with all the attendant and timid world perspectives.

From that day forward, I became the guerilla reader, taking ADULT books without checking them out, walking out the front door with the most lascivious, revolutionary literature my mind could possible grasp at the age of nine or ten, the Russians, Voltaire, Cervantes, plays by George Bernard Shaw with introductory prefaces that ultimately exposed my young mind to social despair and melodramatic theological grandiloquences through references to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard ... my next targets.

Needless to say, after you've stolen Kierkegaard from the public library, a cubicle job and a double wide is not in your future.

(In truth, I did return each of these books after reading them, dropping them in the night slot, always after dark, and always with the stealth and cunning of a member of the French maquis. It was all very liberating, almost thrilling, since I half expected to get caught by security guards hidden in the bushes, a special team of library commandos trained to take down any insurgent usurper who would dare commit such acts of impertinence as to STEAL a library book.)

To sum it up, it was the idea that these books were 'forbidden fruit' that made me read them, so yes, the context of presentation can make all the difference in literature. I enjoyed them accordingly, books that I might not otherwise have even considered. Perhaps the idea of censure enhanced my acceptance, but reverence came only through recognition of the value and quality of the content.

As regards T.S. Eliot, because my education was technical, I was never exposed to the man as some sort of demi-god, but as one of a slew of poets in a comprehensive study in which their names were never uttered in half-whispers. Never read that much of Eliot, remember what I did read, and look forward to reading more.

Anyway, who can say that some of the literature we see on web sites surrounded by ads for Viagra and links to the doomsday quatrains of Nostradamus ... who's to say that a future T.S. Eliot does not exist therein.

Matt Dennison
Sep 15, 12:12pm

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Viagrelo.

I ain't think so

eamon byrne
Sep 16, 05:58am

Kid in the library. Where'd I see that before. Some movie maybe. Dunno.

The art equivalent. Guy's famous. Picture will cost you more.

That one hangs in the gallery. Wow. Must be good.

etc.

Bill Yarrow
Sep 16, 01:49pm

If you want to read Eliot, don't start with his poems; start with his essays. He's especially good on the Elizabethan playwrights. He writes in a style absolutely compelling and authoritative. Forget about his reputation. Read him and you'll see why what garnered him the reputation he has.

Here's a link to his essays The Sacred Wood.
http://www.bartleby.com/200/

If you want to begin to understand him (and his poetry), check out Willem Dafoe as Eliot and Miranda Richardson as his first wife in the 1994 movie Tom and Viv. The scene with his wife reading "The Waste Land" out loud is shockingly insightful. You will come to understand that "The Waste Land" is, despite Eliot's pronouncements on "impersonality" and protestations to the contrary, an absolutely personal (almost confessional!) poem.

For me, the only way to understand Eliot's poetry is to read his influences (and I don't mean the misdirecting ones he references in the notes he appends to "The Waste Land.") His real influences were poets like Tennyson. See the relation between Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters" and "The Waste Land." (I spoke on this topic at a meeting of the T.S. Eliot Society a number of years ago.)

If you want to hear the poetry in Eliot, read "Ash Wednesday." If you want to hear the master of language and cadence, read "Gerontion."

"Prufrock"? Well, let's discuss that sometime over a beer or two.

Sam Rasnake
Sep 16, 02:06pm

A number of years ago - I lstened to Eliot's reading of The Waste Land - had it on vinyl - and listened to it every day for a year. Nearly 25 minutes a pop. That was a chore - but also an experience.

Bill Yarrow
Sep 16, 04:10pm

Sam,

I own that LP also.

"listened to it every day for a year"
Masochism? Sounds like a form of torture! Eliot is a terrible reader of his own works.

Ever read Waugh's A Handful of Dust? (Eliot connection again!). Tony Last trapped in the jungle forced to read the works of Charles Dicklens over and over aloud to Mr. Todd.

Sam Rasnake
Sep 16, 04:23pm

Inspiration. His reading - not just of TWL but all his pieces - very numb and dusty. I was at work on my MA - a mix of Eliot, Robert Graves, and Joseph Campbell. It worked.

Matt Dennison
Sep 16, 05:39pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhiCMAG658M

Actually I think this is a very good reading, very musical, very pleasing.

(strange pronunciation of "time." sounds like "dime.")

Matt Dennison
Sep 16, 10:18pm

Interesting, the use of simple and obvious rhyme.

Matt Dennison
Sep 16, 10:58pm

"If you want to read Eliot, don't start with his poems; start with his essays."

That's exactly what I'm talking about, Bill, the warning away of people from the work itself. It's like saying if you want to learn to ride a bike, for heaven's sake don't get on one, go swimming, or go study cave drawings of the wheel, or go to engineering school and study variations of pulleys and any other spinning device, but for goodness' sake do not allow yourself anywhere near a bike!

I take great pleasure in reading Eliot. I go there mainly for the music. Well, almost *entirely* for the music, as I also do for the most part with D. Thomas (I would have to say "In My Craft or Sullen Art" is a touchstone for me--and the music commensurate with the surface meaning)

I find Eliot very simple, hypnotic and pleasurable--like nursery rhymes for big kids--and have little to no interest in what's behind the stage curtains. Perhaps it's a shallow reading--not that anyone here has said that--but it's mine, and I'm very comfortable with it.

Of course if you want to, you can do all the prep work in advance, all the outside study, learn a little Italian, read every appended note, every essay, every source, study every precursor, read everything by every possible influence--and all this is good and fine, but in the meantime the bike sits in the corner...

There are a wide variety of ways to approach any work. My favorite is to open the book and read.

(which often LEADS TO the miscellaneous works that surround any work of accepted importance: the diaries, the biographies, the gossip...but I feel these should come after--and will, if the reader is so inclined--reading the work itself.

I imagine that if he were to have met someone unfamiliar with his work, and who wanted to read a poem of his, that he would not hand them a four-foot-tall dusty stack of books and magazines and essays and papers and interviews, saying, Here, read these first.

I imagine he would hand them person a poem.

James Lloyd Davis
Sep 17, 07:06am

Agree about the 'just do it' reading philosophy. Everything else is best served after the fact, if at all. Now, I'm going to have to read more T.S. Think I'll skip the movie for now, though Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson sound like a lovely combo.

David Ackley
Sep 17, 07:22am

A good and well wrought argument, Matt, though, as often with good arguments, a little astray from the target. I thought Bill was more saying that the essays were good reading in themselves, and being less read, a way to slough off all the recieved opinions about Eliot for oneself. Read the poems, read the essays, throw them up in the air and grab the first thing that falls. With Eliot, it's all pretty good and he'll likely survive both our attacks, and our preferences to be read again.

Bill Yarrow
Sep 17, 07:27am

What David said.

stephen hastings-king
Sep 17, 02:04pm

I like Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" because I like the argument that the strongest reason for kidz, say, to be taught something like a canon or tradition is so they can get jokes.

Bill Yarrow
Sep 17, 04:50pm

Matt:

"the warning away of people from the work itself"..."read these first"

Nah. Don't believe in prep work. I just like his prose better than his poems. He's got a provocative mind and he's a good phrasemaker. He's also wrong A LOT.

Matt Dennison
Sep 17, 04:57pm

I be back later 2nite...

;-)

Matt Dennison
Sep 25, 08:22pm

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/poetry/p228.asp

mxi wodd
Jul 18, 03:06am

ezrats?

mxi wodd
Jul 18, 03:28am

"Think I'll skip the movie for now, though Willem Dafoe and Miranda Richardson sound like a lovely combo."

Tom and Viv.

It's a VERY GOOD movie.

Frankie Saxx
Jul 18, 05:45pm

Focusing on prep work often signals that my self confidence is running low.

Frankie Saxx
Jul 18, 05:46pm

Or I'm just being lazy & pretending like ordering all the tools is the work so I can avoid the real work.

mxi wodd
Jul 18, 08:18pm

Exactly.

JUST GET ON THE BIKE.

Fall down.
Skin yo' knee.
Get up.
Go again.
INSIST
Daddy let go
of YOUR handlebars.
Fail.
Try Again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

At least it will be YOUR experience (whether or not you learn to ride the bike...)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 19, 07:46am

There are some things where the prep work matters. Climbing mountains, building bridges and skyscrapers, for instance. But nobody ever died of reading TS Eliot (or anything else) without having the proper respect installed in them beforehand by Figures of Authority.

I've been watching Deadwood, and there's this part... well, have you seen it? I don't want to spoil.

mxi wodd
Jul 19, 08:10pm

I don't watch tv.

It watches me.

(financially had to drop cable to keep internet...)

Matthew Robinson
Jul 19, 08:48pm

Frankie, are you referring to, "Have you ever been beaten, Merrick?"

Frankie Saxx
Jul 19, 09:36pm

@CrimeDawg I am an unrepentant television watcher. I know it is uncool to admit.

@Matt I was thinking more of how, after they got the land, they just got to work building the store. No quibbling over plans & where to put the windows & what kind of wood. They just got to work on the building. (It's a really good show. I watch crap shows too, but Deadwood is good.)

Matthew Robinson
Jul 19, 09:46pm

Deadwood is the BEST. SHOW.

mxi wodd
Jul 20, 02:55am

"They just got to work on the building."

That's beautiful.

(unrepentant once-king of the channel-surfers...)

Frankie Saxx
Jul 21, 12:07pm

@Matt Haha. Deadwood is to westerns what The Wire was to cop dramas.

Matthew Robinson
Jul 22, 09:49pm

In my opinion (obviously), the writing on DEADWOOD, on a sentence level, is superior to anything that's ever graced the small screen.

Frankie Saxx
Jul 22, 10:18pm

I like Elizabeth Sarnoff.

mxi wodd
Jul 22, 11:14pm

Some of the writing in those old commercials was pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcs8d4OlJl4

Frankie Saxx
Jul 23, 10:00am

@Matt have you read any of the scripts?

Twin Peaks had real good writing.

@CD That's usually what I say when I realize the only coffee option is instant. :D

mxi wodd
Jul 24, 02:34am

"Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot are fighting in the captain's tower..."

(I see no connection between Dylan and Dylan (namesake) Thomas.

((I see a GREAT connection between Zimmerman and T.S. Eliot))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-8KA4G4S9o

mxi wodd
Jul 24, 03:04am

Having lived and loved on desolation row, this song melts my spine.

Matthew Robinson
Jul 24, 03:55am

I haven't read the scripts of Deadwood, but I've watched each episode between four and six times, and will probably watch them six more times. I'd love to read them, though. Milch had such an interesting process for writing, highlighted in the special features of the DVDs. Kind of a lot to go into, but it was some strange genius.

Twin Peaks did have great writing SOMETIMES. Season One and the first half of Season Two in particular. I'd say Twin Peaks is about as good as LOST, which, similar to TP, kind of lost its way at around the 2/3rds mark. Both very good shows.

Frankie Saxx
Jul 24, 09:10am

I'm still on my first run through.

LOST didn't bother me, even at the end. I know there was a lot of complaining about unanswered questions, but I thought they did okay. (And they did have some really good writing also. Sarnoff again.)

I love scripts. Sometimes they're art in their own right.

Have you seen Foyle's War? It's a British show.

Matthew Robinson
Jul 24, 03:43pm

I completely agree about scripts--in part due to the fact that I've recently taken up writing plays, and the more I read, the more hypnotized and inspired I am by the form.

I haven't seen Foyle's War, just added it on Netflix (which doesn't seem to think I'll like it, but it's been wrong before).
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