To understand this poem, you don’t need biography. Your own personal understanding of the loss of innocence and the pain of mortality serve just as well as Thomas’s disastrous attempts at adulting.
Jayme Stayer, S.J.
Jayme Stayer, S.J., is a professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. He is past president of the International T. S. Eliot Society, editor of Volume 5 of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot, and the author of Becoming T. S. Eliot (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
T. S. Eliot can be intimidating. You should still read his poem ‘Marina.’
Whenever I teach a seminar on T. S. Eliot’s work, I spend the first day of class on ‘Marina.’
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
The Emily Dickinson poem about love that you should read
By force of her imagination and skill, Emily Dickinson could take the measure of solitude, opprobrium and even damnation.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Why you should read Richard Wilbur’s ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’
A hymn to mercy and love, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” springs to my lips when my heart is quiet. I teach it as often as I can for my introductory poetry students.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
‘The Waste Land’ at 100: T.S. Eliot’s monument to despair — with a few laughs thrown in
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of “The Waste Land.” The 433-line poem is important, but it’s not very user-friendly.