I am alternating between frustration and fascination with these cryptic modernist writers. I found reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land very pleasurable until I tried to summarize what I had read. Here's the conversation I had with myself "Wow this poem is really good, he's been talking about war and death and... (epiphany) there are a bunch of names I don't know, different languages, and random stream of consciousness. This is more confusing than Ulysses!" Like Andrew said in his post, Modernists like Eliot wanted to do something that had never been done before. Eliot does not want the reader to have a clear understanding of the poem on the first read, so he includes ambiguity in his descriptions of place and characters. The setting changes rapidly. The language fluctuates between the most refined speech to vernacular. There is terribly beautiful imagery, probably the main reason I still enjoyed reading it despite not knowing completely what was going on. Ultimately, I cannot fault T.S. Eliot for being complex, I just have to decide how much work I want to put forth as I read this type of poetry. Understanding Eliot's life, the various languages he uses, and enlarging my vocabulary will result in an enriched appreciation for his poetry. So if you like thinking abstractly and doing lots of research, read modernist literature. If not, read Shel Silverstein or something.
Or listen to Ron Swanson do some slam poetry. This makes so much sense.
I think being at the point of frustration / fascination means you've largely succeeded in reading this poetry as it was intended. Are you interested in making a claim about whether this kind of literature is worth it? Or, perhaps, at what point it does not become worth reading?
ReplyDeleteI read it with the intention of using it to supplement my definition claim that Ulysses is basically free verse poetry. But as my thoughts came together my post did not really talk about why I originally read it.
ReplyDeleteI loved your slam poem--it's right down my topic's alley and is, as you said yourself, more entertaining than any modernist junk you can read. Slam poetry 1, other poetry 0 hahah
ReplyDelete(jk I like modernist poetry, but it does require lots of outside research and knowledge, which the slam poem about bacon did not because the love of bacon is basically universal)
But the fact that confusing modernist poetry is so dang elitist and difficult to unravel is what makes it so cool! Anyone can write a funny poem about bacon and play some bongos. Look at it this way, there are way more "Born Again Christians" than Mormons, but which is cooler? Correct, the one that is more complicated and requires more work.
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