The Wastelands is painfully pretentious crap in my book. If you're going to try and read Eliot, read The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and call it a day.
Pretentiousness can be a pretty heavy impediment to enjoying poetry. The fine line between "carefully chosen words" and "OOH, look at me, I'm so twee and clever" gets danced over pretty often. So, as a result, I don't read a lot of poetry but I still have my favorites. Dickinson, for instance. She wrote primarily for herself, which I find makes her stuff more honest. Shel Silverstein's a poet in my book as well.
In the blog, people come and go, posting of Michaelango, the Ninja Turtle
Date: 2008-03-11 04:10 pm (UTC)Pretentiousness can be a pretty heavy impediment to enjoying poetry. The fine line between "carefully chosen words" and "OOH, look at me, I'm so twee and clever" gets danced over pretty often. So, as a result, I don't read a lot of poetry but I still have my favorites. Dickinson, for instance. She wrote primarily for herself, which I find makes her stuff more honest. Shel Silverstein's a poet in my book as well.
And hooray for Limericks! I've actually been writing a lot of Limericks and Haikus lately. :P