Critical Appreciation of T.S.Eliot's " The Waste Land"

Introduction: Having viewed the modern materialistic civilization from the view-point of spiritualism and Christian Existentialism, T.S. Eliot has represented his reaction in the form of this poem entitled The Waste Land. It is a symbolical poem composed in the style of poetic esotericism, “Formally the poem has been described as a much of ideas and as a poetic cryptogram”. As such his is the poem of myth and symbols, of a series of trains of thoughts whose parts look unconnected with one another.

The Epigraph: The poem bears an epigraph written partly in Latin and partly in Greek. The speaker in the epigraph says that he has noticed the Sibyl at Cymae hanging in a cage and wishing to die; but she could not die because she was almost immortal by virtue of a boon from Apollo. According to recent criticism, the Sibyl hanging in a cage represents the human soul hanging in the cage of Materialism. Being immortal, the soul can’t die. But it is highly miserable, since the materialistic man is constantly haunted by anxiety, cares, worries etc. he is all “fear in a handful of dust”.

The title words: The title of the poem The Waste Land has been inspired by Miss Dessie L. Weston’s book from Ritual to Romance. It refers to a Waste Land described in one of the Grail Romances. The Land was ruled by the Fisher king. He along with his knights ravished certain maidens who were guardians of the Grail mysteries. Because of that outrage, he became impotent and fell ill, and his land became Waste. Eliot has represented in his poem the modern materialistic world as the wasteland, and its rulers as the modern materialistic man – He has profaned the mysteries of life and being, namely the Soul and God. Consequent upon his outrage, he has become spiritually impotent and has fallen ill with misery and his land has become Waste spiritually.

The Theme stated through symbolism: The doctrine of Spiritualism, asserts that in the universe all the material forms are unreal. The immortal soul is the only reality and it has real existence apart from matter. The doctrine of Christian Existentialism holds that man must raise his soul above the sins of the Flesh and the temptation of wealth.

In order to illustrate his point of view, the poem surveys the evil effects of Materialism on the modern society of the West. In part-I he shows that the materialistic society is ruled by sensualism, unholy love, fraud as reflected in Madame Sosostri’s Clairvoyance, and misery born of materialistic desires. In part-II the poet opines that the modern woman considers life a game of chess in which she has to keep her lover under her power by means of her beauty and cosmetics till another lover knocks at the door. In Part-III, he shows that the modern men are burning in the fire by unholy love. The part-IV, he suggests that commercialism leads the modern man only to mirage and death. In part-V the poet sums up the nature of The Waste Land and its impotence. In fact, ‘here is no water but only rock’. The water of selfless love and compassion if missing in modern sphere, there is ‘rocks’ metonymy for materialistic thoughts and deeds. If sensual pleasures, madness for worldly riches and wealth be the crux of modern Waste land, there are three gates to man’s Salvation – Datta, Dayandham and Damayanta.

Who the protagonist: With fragmentary passages, literary quotations and allusions, there is an apparent lack of logical relationship along them. The reason is that the whole poem is a stream of consciousness in verse of one personage, Tiresias. He is the protagonist. Almost immortal, blind, bisexual he is the hidden poet, the very learned. Through memories, meditations, literary quotations, allusions and implicit contrasts his is the view of materialistic world.

Style & Versification: In esoteric style with missing links, quotations from foreign literature, use of myths and symbols are the key points in the poem. The tendency to suppress defining links may be traced back to the French symbolist. The Waste Land symbol is based on the myth of the Grail legend. This symbol has been developed by means of the vegetation myth with the rites of fertility found in ancient Eastern cults. Further, the poem is of striking speech rhythms for a sudden tightening, for a cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood. In conversational passages the speech rhythm gets down to colloquial level.

Conclusion: To conclude, The Waste Land is “the most notable single poem” of the modern age. It “goes beyond a mere diagnosis of the spiritual distempers of the age; it is a lament over man’s fallen nature, a prophecy and a promise”. According to prominent critic, it has serious defects. They are inherent in its origin and in method. He observes:

“The Waste Land does not carry within itself all that is necessary for understanding. Its structural basis lies in a special branch of learning, and it involves continual references to other branches of knowledge with which few readers can be acquainted.

Dickinson’s Attitude Towards Life and Love from Her Poems

Attitude to life is a very comprehensive term which encompasses a great many aspects of life. Life consists of not a few elements but almost an infinite variety of things. However a poet usually does have some attitude towards life which in his/her case may mean he/she highlights some particular aspects of life not too many of course. In the case of Emily Dickinson we find that she has highlighted some important aspects of life – friendship, society, pain and suffering and growth in life and the most potent factor of life that is love.

In some of Dickinson’s poems she talks about dear people who seem to be regarded more as beloved friends than as objects of romantic ardor. Later in life Dickinson wrote to Samuel Bowles ‘My friends are my estate’ and still later she declared that letters feel to her like immortality because they contain the mind ‘without corporeal friend’. From her statements it seems that sometimes she treasured friendship held at a distance more than the actual presence of friends.

Dickinson has distinctive views on pain, suffering and growth as an integral part of life. Suffering plays a major role in her poems about death and immortality just as death appears in her poems on suffering.

▶Her poems on the themes of suffering and growth belong to three groups:

(1) deprivation as a cause of suffering

(2) suffering leading to disintegration and

(3) suffering as bringing compensatory rewards of spiritual growth.

▶Some of her poems reflect her belief that suffering is necessary for creativity. Poems on love and on nature suggest that suffering will lead to a fulfillment of love or that the fatality which one feels in nature elevates one and sharpens his sensibility. ‘ Death –blow is a life blow to some’ implies that every apparent evil has a corresponding good and good is never brought to birth without evil.

Dickinson considered the subject of love from a philosophical point of view although her love poetry had its source in her own tension is indicated here a tension between her desire to live and her helplessness before death.

▶Thus we find Dickinson has explored different aspects of death. She is indeed an eminent poet of death.

What Do You Know of Dickinson Philosophy of Pain and Suffering and Growth

Dickinson’s poetic world is permeated with pain and suffering and the struggle of evade, face, overcome and wrest meaning from it or growing from it. Suffering is central to her poetic faith and it is involved in the creative processes as well. It is part of her ambivalent response to the mysteries of time and nature.

Love deprivation lies behind many of her poems. ‘Renunciation is a piercing virtue’ deals with the theme of her abandoning the hope of a beloved person. However she is less visible here than in some of her poems where a lover is visible and is not clear about the final meaning of her painful experience.

Some of her poems seal with childhood deprivation. In them she is explicit about the source of her suffering but they are less powerful than her general treatment of suffering. ‘pain has an element of blank’ is one of her poems in which her anguish goes on indefinitely. It is a timeless suffering, mental rather than physical. ‘After great pain a formal feeling comes’ is Dickinson’s most popular poem about suffering and one of her greatest poems. The pain is psychological here and there is no real damage to the body and no pursuit of healing.

Some of Dickinson’s poems about poetry and art reflect her belief that suffering is necessary for creativity.

Poems on love and on nature suggest that suffering will lead to a fulfillment of love or that the fatality which she feels present in nature elevates her and sharpens her sensibility.

▶Pain and suffering are to Dickinson the very expression of eternity. The infinity of human suffering is bought out in mystical terms in the poem ‘pain –has an element of blank.’ Pain is a consummate experience which paves the way for heaven. In ‘the hallowing of pain’ the poet says that heaven is not achieved by one who labors in the midway that is half heartedly but he reaches heaven who tries with utmost pain to reach there. The road to heaven is covered with hurdles of pain.

▶Dickinson believes that the happiest experiences of life become more vivid and picturesque and therefore more memorable when they are seen from the vantage point and suffering and anguish.

▶Dickinson was a great poet of pain and suffering and growth and spiritual regeneration through them. Her poetic feelings of such emotions are intense though they are sometimes hidden beneath the garb of rhetorical figures.

What is Racism or Realism. Discuss Langston Hughes as an Anti Racialist

Racism or racialism is any action, practice or belief that reflects the racial worldview the ideology that humans are divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called ‘races’ that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality intellect morality and other cultural behavioral features and that some races are innately superior to others. Racism was at the heart of north American slavery and the overseas colonization and empire building activities of some western Europeans especially in the 18thcentury.

▶there had been many persons in history who objected to this racist ideal. They are called anti-racialists. Langston Hughes was one of them and many of his poems bear evidence of his anti-racialist attitude.

‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ is apparently concerned with proving the ancientness of the Negro race but at a deeper level it is a protest against slavery of the black community in a time of great racial intolerance, injustice and inequality in America. Hughes inspired and united the black community when their voice was not accepted by the predominantly white society. As a result he became the unofficial poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance that voiced the protest of the black Americansagainst the discrimination made by the whites against the Negroes.

The poem ‘I, too Sing America’ is about someone who is claiming his American identity and social and civil rights. He is a black American who expresses his condition as a slave at a white man’s house and hopes that sometime in the future he will be able to sit at the same table with the white guests at his master’s house. this poem was published when civil rightmovement aimed at ending the racial segregation anddiscrimination between the Negroes and the white Americans and winning constitutional rights for voting for the black people. This poem ‘I, Too Sing America’ embodies the poet’s anti-racialist attitude in a highly poetic form.

The ‘Harlem’ poem reminds the readers of the Harlem Renaissance otherwise known as New Negro Movement which took place in the 1920s for the realization of the black Americans equal rights with the whites. It also anticipates the famous speech named ‘I have a dream’ by Martin Luther King, jr. a decade later.

Thus in the above poems we find many traces of Hughes anti-recitalist attitude. In many other poems of Hughes such traces are also discernible.

Discuss How Whitman Has Used Imagery in His Poems

Whitman’s poetry contains a profusion of images and it is truly perceived in almost any of his poem.

Whitman employs different types of imagery in his poems and they are galore in order to create the desires effect. All sorts of images crowd in his poems images of the earth the sea and the sky night and day hills mountain and rivers nature and animals images of sex energy and vitality. His long poems like when lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d or “crossing Brooklyn

▶How Whitman has used imagery in his poems.

ferry’ seem to be made up of a number of brief descriptions. At a glance they seem chaotic as they flash past the eye in rapid succession. But in reality they have an implicit pattern. In the poem ‘when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’ we see an abundance of images of the earth the sky the sea and all that moving in quick succession.

Whitman’s images are multi faceted they function on more than one level. In all cases he used images to carry the reader from the world of sensory perception to the world of thought in which he achieves some perspective. From the sensory he moves to the metaphysical level. The images are of course continually becoming symbols whose meanings fluctuate. The bird in ‘when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d’ is grief stricken b y the death of Lincoln but it pours songs whose themes tally with the thoughts of poet. The stars symbols eternity. It is seen to be brightly glowing in the western sky signifying the immortality of Lincoln’s memory and also the eternity of the soul.

Images of vitality and energy are scattered through the works of Whitman. Whitman’s sensibility and response to the visible world are expressed clearly through his images. He seems to be specially fascinated by the essential dynamics of life by the objects that suggest energy and vitality. His sexual images or erotic images indicate his quest for vitality.

Grass is a recurring image in Whitman's poetry. It represents democracy, individuality and kinship with all.

The image of the trinity suggests the unity in the universe. All objects of the heaven and the earth are conceived of as having formed an unity.

Whitman’s images are lively, vivid and impressive.

Discuss how ‘The love songs of J. Alfred Prufrock’ represents the conflict of a modern man.

The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a dramatic monologue presenting a middle-aged modern man who is unable to take a decision about making the proposal of marriage to the lady whom he loves. In a series of stanzas the lover analyses the reason for a resolution and re-decision and tries to justify his cowardice and lack of nerves, which make him completely incapable of formulating a proposal of love to his beloved. Behind this hesitating mental condition of Prufrock we find a disease of modern routine works the aimless life of the city dwellers and his monotonous round of social parties.

▶Prufrock represents a man of split personality, a separation of head and heart, a paralysis of the will and too much worry regarding a love proposal. By referring to Hamlet he expresses his psychological problem, his irresolution, complicated by the fact that thought he is a middle-aged man, bald in the head, he is not hot blooded. He dresses smartly, smiles to ladies but he is unable to express his inner mind. His excuses for postponing the making of the love proposal arise from neurosis and from his fear of rejection. The poem highlights the dilemma and indecisiveness as well as the squalor and barrenness of modern urban civilization. The triviality and barrenness of modern life find a beautiful expression in the following line.

▶“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”.

▶Prufrock is conscious but he is conscious of nothing. He is like a patient lying etherized upon a table before operation. Having no strength left in him to act, he wanders mentally through the half deserted streets, till his mind reaches the most important question before him but he is afraid of mentioning it. His mind is in a tension. It is full of a hundred indecisions, “a hundred visions and revisions”. The problem with him is thought he knows the ladies, he is afraid of making a proposal for himself. He would definitely feel embarrassed.

▶At one time Prufrock thinks of a plan to make a proposal to his Ladylove, but he feels nervous to talk about himself. He is afraid of death and the very idea of death makes him reject his expressing love to a lady. Prufrock takes refreshment to gather courage to make a decision. Supposing he talked about his proposal to his lady but she might turn round and tell him that she had no desire to marry him. That is why he feels extremely nervous.

🔳Although Prufrock is indecisive and inactive, he does not like to compare himself with Hamlet. He is like Polonius, middle-aged, conscious of his position,though double headed and sometimes ridiculous.

🌟Thus there is no progress in the love affair of Profrock. The poem ends where it began.

Modern Poetry

1.20Th Century American Poetry
2.What is Treatment of Time in The Waste Land?
3.A Study of Selected Poems by W.b Yeats
4.Describe W. B. Yeats style and Autobiographical Influence in Yeats Poems
5.Irish elements & Themes in Yeats' poetry
6.William Butler Yeats as a modern poet
7.William Butler Yeats as a Romantic Poet & his Poetic Inspiration
8.Symbolism & Auto-Biography in W.B Yeats' Poetry
9.Describe Complete detail of Eliot's Waste Land?
10.Describe Different Types of Poetry
11.What are the Key principles of 'Preface' to Lyrical Ballads?
12.Seamus Heaney : redress of poetry
13.Critical Analysis of Lucy Gray By William Wordsworth
14.Explanation Of Ariel Poem By Sylvia Plath
15.Literary Trends in Modem poetry

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20th Century American Poetry

Overview

Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Second Edition is an essential collection of poetry which allows readers an unparalleled survey of the movements, schools and distinctive voices of modern and contemporary American poetry. It combines two existing Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections, Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Twentieth-Century African American Poetry, with over 500 volumes of newly-licensed material from established and emergent poets.

Key areas covered by the collection include:

Beat Generation: Beginning in New York in the 1940s and later associated with San Francisco, the Beat movement blended comic exuberance with prophetic aspirations and had a profound and lasting impact on the American poetic sensibility of the late twentieth century. The collection contains the essential works from this influential movement including Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' and 'A Supermarket in California', Gregory Corso's 'The Vestal Lady on Brattle' and the 'blues' poems of Jack Kerouac. From the later West Coast period of the movement, Gary Snyder's 'A Berry Feast', Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 'A Coney Island of the Mind' and Michael McClure's 'Ode to Jackson Pollock' are all included amongst others. Works from more peripheral figures on the Beat scene such as James Broughton, William Everson and Kenneth Rexroth are also featured in the collection.

Black Arts Movement: The Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s could trace its ideological roots back to the literary Renaissance's of Harlem and Chicago of the inter-war years. Political activism, social commentary and the struggle for civil rights were key to the African-American poets at this time and these concerns are evident in much of their work included in this collection. Imamu Amiri Baraka, at the forefront of the movement, is represented by his essential volumes including The Dead Lecturer (1964), Black Arts (1966) and Afrikan Revolution (1973). Gwendolyn Brooks' poetry is featured including her critically acclaimed Annie Allen (1949) and the complex and intriguing In the Mecca (1968). Other members of this movement included in the collection are Jayne Cortez, Etheridge Knight, Dudley Randall, Sonia Sanchez and Audre Lorde.

Black Mountain School: A term coined by Donald M. Allen and named after the experimental Black Mountain College founded by John Andrew Rice, the movement's two leading exponents, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson are well represented in the collection. Inspired by the modernist works of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, Black Mountain poets 'projective verse' brought a freedom of form, content and language to their poetry which can be seen in the collection in Edward Dorn's Abhorrences (1990) and Denise Levertov's The Jacob's Ladder (1961) and The Sorrow Dance (1966).

Objectivism and Deep Image: Led by Louis Zukofsky, Objectivism was a term adopted by a group of 1930s poets whose work intensified the aims of the Imagist movement that preceded it by emphasising the presentation of the object. The collection contains the key works of the movement by William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi and Kenneth Rexroth. Deep Image poets developed this concentration on the object by combining it with a Jungian sense of the connection between the image and the unconscious. Leading proponents of the movement are featured in the collection including Robert Kelly, Robert Bly and James Wright.

Women's Writing: From the late 1960s onwards, women's poetry has emerged as a poetic category predicated by the sense that writing is not a gender-neutral arena. The collection contains a broad range of twentieth century female poets and their works from the early modernist verse of H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Gertrude Stein and Edna St. Vincent Millay to the postmodern explorations of women, marginalisation and suppressed voices in the works of Rita Dove, Ai, Margaret Walker, Maya Angelou and Susan Howe.

Harlem and Chicago Renaissances: Borrowing from folk literature of the black tradition and yet treating themes of African-American identity in a modern way, the Harlem Renaissance occurred in the New York district during the 1920s. Perhaps the most famous figure in the movement, Langston Hughes, is represented by his collected poems in the collection. Other notable and influential figures, including Jean Toomer, Claude McKay and James Weldon Johnson are also featured in the collection. The Chicago Renaissance, which took place from the early 1930s to the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, brought African-American poetry to a more political end as can be seen in the works of Fenton Johnson, Arna Wendell Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Walker; all included in this collection. Also featured in the collection is the hugely influential Spoon River Anthology (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters.

Language Poetry: Influenced by and reacting to the Objectivists and the Black Mountain School, Language poetry is nevertheless a distinct and significant category of American twentieth century poetry. Its intentions were first broadcast in the journal L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E whose editors, Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, are included in the collection. The central tenets of the movement, a focus on the material of language rather than its expressive qualities, can be seen in other important works featured in the collection including Pierce-Arrow (1999) by Susan Howe, The Promises of Glass (2000) by Michael Palmer and Up to Speed (2004) by Rae Armantrout.

Modernism: An international movement, Modernism saw the creation of many of the poetic masterpieces of the twentieth century and is characterised by formal experimentalism, explorations of the unconscious and the alienating force of modern life. The collection contains many of the most significant Modernist poets and works including Ezra Pound's Cantos, and the complete poems of William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Wallace Stevens, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Mina Loy, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

New York School: Closely linked to the development of Abstract Expressionism in the art world, the New York School of poetry emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and is characterised by witty, abstract and colloquial verse. The collection contains the works of the School's main proponent John Ashbery as well as those of other key poets including Joseph Ceravolo, Ron Padgett and Kenward Elmslie. More peripheral but still significant members of the movement are also included in the collection such as Clark Coolidge, Barbara Guest and Eileen Myles.Chicano Poetry: The collection now includes significant works of Chicano poetry from contemporary Mexican-American poets such as Lorna Dee Cervantes, Pat Mora, Tomas Rivera and Ray Gonzalez. The Nuyorican poetry movement is also fully represented with volumes from Sandra Maria Esteves, Tato Laviera and Miguel Pinero. Influential and award-winning volumes from key Cuban-American poets are also included in the collection such as Carolina Hospital's Capitalism (2004) and Rafael Campo's The Other Man Was Me (1994).

Simple Description of the American Poetry