eliot

i heart t.s. eliot.  he puts words together in a way that is beautiful to my ears.

for no good reason (just because i want to, and here i get to do what i want to!) here are my three most favoritest lines of eliot's poetry.

#3, from "the waste land":


"You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;"
"They called me the hyacinth girl."
--Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.


"the waste land" is an awesome poem, and thanks to a college english class i understand about 50% of it, and that is a 50% that i am proud of.

this is one of those poems that it's so hoity-toity to like.  if you say "the waste land" is your favorite poem, odds are you're just trying to sound smart.  readers: i really do love this poem.  i don't claim to understand it all, but i've read it and it's been analyzed for me and i comprehended some of that analysis.

#2, from "the love song of j. alfred prufrock":


For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons


that whole poem kicks ass; i had trouble picking just that line.  i love this visual - this measuring of time by the one spoon a day you use to stir your coffee and that then accumulates in the sink.


#1, the entire poem "preludes," but particularly this part:


And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

i had - in high school, when i first discovered eliot - almost this whole poem memorized.  i don't know why it's my favorite, but i can so clearly visualize every bit of it, and i like that.

happy poetry day, a holiday created by a miss claire royal proclamation.