It’s National Poetry Month!

As with any romantic relationship, falling in love with a poem requires a correct meeting of time and place. To celebrate National Poetry Month, I’ve decided to share some of the poems that I have fallen for. It’s only a sample–I am an absolute whore for poetry and couldn’t possibly include all of the notches on my bookcase.

I go into this with the understanding that, for you, this art might not be met at the right time or in the right place. Maybe you won’t understand how a particular set of words healed my spirit, broke my heart, and scattered me senseless. But that’s part of the beauty of poetry. Your experience of it, and mine, matter independently. That being said, you might find yourself in the unusual circumstances of having extra time on your hands. I can think of few better ways to spend it than on poetry.

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (1922)

There’s really no way to start an April of poetry other than with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The first line of the poem, “April is the cruellest month,” was, for the U.S. at least, the determinant in naming April “National Poetry Month.” So of course, homage! Also, Eliot is whom you have to thank for Cats, and the recent film production of that musical brought us together as a nation more than any non-virus related thing I’ve seen in my lifetime.

I LOVE this poem, and I will confess that I *barely* know what it’s about, though I do note the distinct lack of jellicle cats.

I first met The Waste Land in 2001. This is a notable time because it was before the internet was the internet, and there are over a hundred allusions in these epic 434 lines, as well as phrases in several different languages. So when I began reading it, I found myself in my college library surrounded by a dozen reference books at a time. (Yes, it had that super good book smell, ya hippie.) Each allusion I uncovered became a teeny, hard-won treasure that, while already owned by countless scholars, in that space felt like mine alone.

The first line, “April is the cruellest month,” is a twisted allusion to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which in 2001 I had read a few months prior. So that one I understood. And yeah, I felt like a complete intellectual badass for recognizing it. The thing is, even though it was the opening line, it was the fourth allusion. Because there is an epigraph:

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβνλλα τί ϴέλεις; respondebat illa: άπο ϴανεΐν ϴέλω.”

Turns out this is from the Satyricon by Gaius Petronius, translated to:
“I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: ‘Sibyl, what do you want?’ she answered: ‘I want to die.’”

Uplifting! Also, there are Latin and Greek here, which occur throughout the poem and act as the first clue as to which types of language dictionaries you’ll be needing to add to your pile.

Following the epigraph is the dedication (allusion #2):
For Ezra Pound
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

During my first read-through, already my heart was aflutter because I had recently fallen deeply for Mr. Pound. Check, intellect, you got this one, too! But the rest? English to Italian dictionary it is, then.

For Ezra Pound
THE BETTER CRAFTSMAN

And that was when I fell in love with T.S. Eliot. I do not know if there is a more perfect dedication out there, but I believe there is not.

Then we see, still before the first line, that the poem is divided into sections, beginning with (allusion #3) I. The Burial of the Dead. This is from a traditional Anglican burial service, which sets the piece up in multiple ways, exactly how I have since forgotten.

The point is that when I first started studying this poem, I spent a good half an hour on reference material by the first line alone. That’s not a sustainable pace, unless you are…perhaps in quarantine? With the internet? It’s a lot easier now to explore, so why not check out this annotated version?

What came to pass back then was that I embarked on an adventure that forced me to be okay with not understanding what was going on. (I’d had some experience with this already, being a Faulkner fan.) When I had time, I parsed and discovered and delighted in findings. When I had no time, I rolled the words around in my mouth, guessed at their meaning, assigned to them what I needed at the moment, and delighted at the strum of connection that hummed below any intellectual understanding of it.

And this has been an enduring love, although not my perfect Eliot love. (That’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.) I return to this poem regularly, when it calls to me, when unreal city pops in my head at two in the morning, when the ugliness of our potential as humans is at the forefront of my thoughts.

I return to it when I need it.

Short Stuff:

• T.S. Eliot was born on September 26. This makes him my half-birthday buddy.
• This poem caused quite the ruckus when it was first published, and it is still pretty ruckusy.

Topics:

death & dying; how messed up our society is; necessity of art & literature
TW: sexual assault

Excerpts:

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

***
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

***
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Click Here to read The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

Hey! If you’d like to discuss any of the poems in this series with me, please reach out. I’d love to host an online poetry meeting.