Preludes by T S Eliot: an introduction

        Most of us understand, appreciate and enjoy some poems though not all kinds of poems. When we are taught poetry, we learn it as if it is yet another page in the physics text book. The teacher knows the answer and we don’t.

       We learn poetry by analyzing it before we enjoy it. But to write a critical appreciation one needs to enjoy and appreciate a poem. When we do so we should be open and not compare. We should deal with poems the way we (should) deal with kids. Each one is great in its own way.

Poets are great because of their honesty. A dishonest poet is in no way great even if he agrees with great people and their thoughts. So, when we discuss a poem we only have to look at how well the poet has brought it all out on paper and conveyed to us even though he is far away and long ago from us.

         T S Eliot's great work is The Waste Land. It changed overnight the way poets wrote poems or discussed about the old ones. Echoes of this wonderful work of art can be heard in The Preludes too. One may disagree with Eliot’s view of life and literature. He was a great scholar and spoke several languages including Latin and Greek. Later in his life he changed his sect of religion from Protestantism to Catholicism. We may wonder how such a great poet could insist on changing from one sect of a religion to another and that too officially and ceremoniously. We may even wonder how a great person could have several spoiled and spoiling relationships. But we have to remind ourselves that we are judging the poetry of a poet and not the propaganda of a citizen.

             During the time when Eliot was writing his main poems, the First World War was on the anvil. The quick gun leaders of Industrialization had gone in for legal looting. Religion no more held sway. People didn’t know what to look forward to or where to go to find peace of mind. They all waited.

            We do like some poems because the thoughts expressed agree with our own. But at times we like them even though we dislike what they tell us. The reason is their beauty. Sometimes this beauty is the result of the images in the poem. When we say beauty of the images we don’t mean that they are all pretty to look at. We mean that they are effective in reaching out to our mind, without bothering our brain much. In fact, poems taste better when they go around our brains and enter our mind directly.

So when we read Eliot, we should not see his images or lines as codified statements. Poets don’t do that.

            If you need a method, imagine that you have failed in an exam which was very crucial to you. You want to see some people who are as hopeless as you are. Now read the poem. Without thinking about the images, see them in your mind. You will find the poem highly communicative.

           The poem talks about everything disgusting. Before Eliot’s time the poets were disgusted with what they saw around them and wrote about things which were far away and long ago. People took it up and they too began to feel disgusted of what was around them. However, this is like running away from reality. Eliot is only expressing how the squalor, depression, loneliness and other feelings of desolation have worked their way into people too. Those are seen in people’s manners and ways of life as well as in their thoughts and thoughtlessness. 

The Cockroach : An Analysis

The Cockroach
Kevin Halligan

       The poem The Cockroach provides an interesting view of human life as compared to that of a cockroach . It is about a cockroach which is a dirty and repulsive little insect foreshadows the author’s projection of himself. At first glance it may appear to be boring and seems like he’s just talking about a cockroach pacing around the room, but there is more to it. At the very end of the poem, the last line works as a mirror which reflects the rest of the poem in a new light. From a mere observation of a cockroach, the poem rises to the level of a true reflection on life in a highly philosophical way.

The poet observes every movement of a cockroach. Each of the movements matches with our own stages of life. We get stuck at some point in our lives in which we want better things or we rush into things not knowing what we really want.  

“At first he seemed quite satisfied to trace

        A path between the wainscot and the door.”

These lines tell us about how the cockroach is satisfied with his current situation, but then it quickly gets bored of it and begins to crave for something more, something new and fresh.

“But soon he turned to jog in crooked rings.”

This tells us, he was moving around with bigger ambitions. After he reaches this ambition he comes up in life and doesn't know what to do from there.

“After a while, he climbed an open shelf

                   And stopped. He looked uncertain where to go.”

He becomes restless and then finally finds something exciting new in the “open shelf”. His actions match with those of humans at a late stage in life, when we suddenly get greedy and want more, instead of realising to be happy with what we’ve got.  

“A former life had led to? I don’t know.”

These are moments of hesitation and uncertainty.  Is the risk worth it? And finally the poet ends is by saying

“Except I thought I recognised myself.”

This line acts as a interpreter for the whole poem.  The poet sees all the similarities between the cockroach and himself as he rushes through life frantically, not wanting to experience life as it is, but by rushing into things without no true goal or purpose. We are constantly looking for choices but then we realise we don’t even know what we truly want.

         

                                                        

Ode to a Grecian Urn

O my dear Urn,
Lemme see how I can greet you properly.
You, the unspoiled bride of Quietness, the adopted child of Silence and slow-moving Time, history written as beautiful paintings (and so can express a beautiful story more beautifully than my poems).
I know I’ve already messed up. Hate talking about me and my poems.
I wonder what stories found in old dog-eared, torn and tattered books, can be found on your surface. Are these stories of goddesses, of men and women, or of all? Are these stories from old cities or from remote valleys? Who are these men or gods painted on your surface? Who are these women who are ever so reluctant to compromise? What are they chasing and why? What are they struggling to escape from and why? Why are they beating their timbrels and blowing their pipes? Why is their happiness so intense and wild?
The songs we have heard are all so sweet, but surely there must be better ones which we can imagine. The unheard ones ought to be sweeter since they exist only in our imagination and imagination can make anything cho chweet. So, I imagine the pipes I see on this urn as playing on. I can’t hear their music but I imagine it to be sweeter than what I have ever heard. When they play, they are not playing to my real ears, for sure, but more to my soul (love it!) and the songs have no particular tone.
Hey, I see a young man under this tree. Painted figures, they all are. See, this young man can’t stop singing. The trees around him will never shed their leaves. In this picture it is always spring. Nothing changes and everything stays fresh. Simply awesome.
I also see a bold lover, trying to kiss his beautiful girl. Bold and beautiful. But he can only try. And she can only be expecting (no pun intended). They will never kiss. They are painted in that position on the surface of this urn. They are close to winning their goal or reaching their aim. But the real act of kissing won’t happen. This should not worry them. She is not going to run away. Though the young man cannot enjoy the bliss of a kiss, his girl is going to be there for him anytime and he can love her eternally. Moreover, she will always be this fair and lovable forever and ever.
I see some trees that can bring happiness to the scene. They can never shed their leaves and look ugly. It will be always spring for them. Caught and arrested as images, they cannot change like the rest of the world. There is a man playing on a flute. He is happy and so are his songs. He will never get tired. He will be playing on that pipe beautiful music forever and ever. The songs will never get old and stale (unlike last year’s chart-busters). His songs aren’t heard and so will never be too familiar or old.
I see a lot of love pictured on this urn. Such love will be warm forever and enjoyed eternally. It is far above the love of human beings like us. It is above any passion that we all have. Our passions often leave us sad. Either he loses interest or she loses interest or they both get fed up. Our passions always end in frustration and leave us with a fever or a headache, and a bitter taste in the mouth. The pain gives us a parching tongue as if we are really sick. But this love pictured here is above all that. It is totally unlike ordinary love since it is ever lasting. Never changes or fades. Never loses its colour.
I wonder who these people pictured here are. They seem to be going to attend an animal sacrifice in some unknown forest under the guidance of some mysterious priest. Where is he leading the young calf to? It is lowing at the skies. Its sides, silver in colour, are decorated with garlands. These people have left some little town by a river or a sea shore. Or even a hillside with a small fort. They have left that place deserted on this pious morning. Pious, because, obviously, it is some kind of a holy ceremonious day for these people. The streets of that town they have left are not pictured on this urn. But I can imagine that there is such a street in some town. It will remain silent till these people have gone back and (OMG!) they won’t and can’t go back. Not even a single man can return to that place and tell us why all the people have left the town. It will always remain a mystery even in our imagination!
My dear Urn, what wonderful shape you have and what ambiance you spread around! You are covered all over with decorations and images of men and women in marble; with branches of trees found in forests and weeds that have been stepped on by wayfarers.
By being silently enigmatic and parrying our questions, you sting us out of our commonplace worries (thoughts). This is exactly what eternity does for us. We are taken out of our daily worries and left to awe and wonder at the bigger picture, something far beyond us, bigger than all of us.
You are a piece of frozen countryside. Decades and centuries later, when this generation grows old and becomes insignificant (wasted) you shall remain as you are. Being a work of art, you will remain as such in the midst of the sorrows, (of course, different sorrows of a different generation) but still a friend to man. That is what a piece of art does. It pleases us generation after generation. (Just like this poem.) You will keep preaching to us the importance of beauty, the only good thing we need to know on this earth. Beauty is the truth about things or the truth about things is what beauty is all about. This is all we know and all that we need to know and remember.
Beauty takes us beyond our petty concerns. It exhilarates us and stills our thoughts. This is why we are speechless when we encounter something beautiful. It is in that moment that we stop worrying. It is the only moment that we fully live in. At all other times we are dying or waiting to die.

Yours

John Keats 

The City Planners: an Analysis

The City Planners by Margaret Atwood is a poem about the changing cityscapes. It conveys the poet’s thoughts feelings and ideas as she passes through a suburban residential area. She takes the reader along with her on the ride with a very common word- ‘these’. This word is followed by the strange phrase ‘residential Sundays’ which suggests routine and boredom. It talks of a group of people who live in their houses and stay away from work only on Sundays which were actually days of mirth and merriment in olden times. When we read ‘dry August sunlight’ the picture is fairly clear. The poet’s sensitivity has been offended by something she saw. She says it is the sanities.

                                      ‘the houses in pedantic rows, the planted

                                        sanitary trees…’

The urban landscapes keep expanding into the suburbs and changes take place overnight. Instead of the wild and chaotic growth of wilderness, the city grows in artificial rows. In the name of security and sanity at the expense of wild beauty, an uncanny order is brought into the cityscapes. She is amused and saddened in a way at the area’s orderliness, perfection and uniformity.  

The trees which were not planted for the sake of beauty but for sanitary purposes assert the mindset of the people. It is all pragmatic and unaesthetic. We hear echoes of Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’ and Robert Frost’s Mending Wall when Margaret Atwood talks about the invisible power against which human aggression seems to have no chance.

The poet is almost feeling intimidated by the perfection of the place. She thinks the levelness of the surfaces is sneering at a dent on her car door, an aberration which she thinks may not be accepted in a place like this. She describes the deafening silence there.

‘No shouting here, or

shattering of glass’

The only sound welcomed here is the mechanical whirring of the motor of a lawn mower which is cutting off the already ‘discouraged grass’ which suggests the insensitive nature of the place. The fact that the place is very quiet adds to its already ‘boring’ atmosphere. Words like rational ’, ‘straight swath and ‘levelness of surface’ suggest an eternally boring place. The silence of the area almost seems to kill the poet. It is too overpowering and unnerving. Shouting is not welcome nor is the sound of a sheet of glass breaking into pieces, however musical that sound may be. Glass is an artificial object but people don’t want to hear it being broken or destroyed while they are happy about a power lawn insensitively mowing down the tender leaves of grass. Even this is done for the sake of leveling and uniformity. This imagery, along with the earlier one of ‘the planted sanitary trees,’ shows man’s futile but dogged attempt to control nature.

The drive ways avoid the wild hysteria of nature by being even and the roofs are all slanted in the same way as if they are unwilling to face the sky directly. However, there are certain things which still keep the wildness of life: the smell of spilt oil, a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of paint on bricks which looks like a bleeding bruise, a plastic hose coiled like the viciousness of a venomous snake.

even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access to

the landscape behind or under

the future cracks in the plaster

Mortar and cement have been thrown lavishly over nature and its beauty and the poet foresees that the past will come out one day in future. Through the cracks in the plaster, the poet sees what has been submerged and is waiting to show its head. She foresees that all these houses which are against chaos which is the golden rule of nature will one day collapse and like a ship sinking tilt to its side and disappear into the earth. 

Like the movement of glaciers, the change is slow and steady and hard to see. This idea is something that sprouted from the annoyance and frustration that is lingering in her mind. She predicts the destruction of perfection in the streets at the hands of the powerful forces of nature such as the earth, seas and glaciers. This destruction will come as a consequence of having dared to control nature and not allowing nature to grow wild. Restricted and controlled, nature strikes back. Natures anger brims up and at a certain point will just burst , throwing wildly its unrestrained forces of displeasure and annoyance which is shared by the poet in the first stanza. The image of the ship slanting and sinking obliquely into the clay sea reminds us of Titanic which also was a man made wonder and was famed as the unsinkable.  

The poet says that this is what brings in the City Planners, the urbanizers. They have the insane face of political conspirators.

‘…scattered over unsurveyed

territories, concealed from each other,

each in his own private blizzard;

When one world collapses they barge in to build another one right there. They guess directions and make plans which are rigid and stern. Uncompassionate (as wooden borders) plans (transitory lines) for humanity’s future are envisioned by them. The present vanishes like a cloud into thin air. The insane planners bank on the panic of a suburb which has lost its roots. They ring in (order in) the future as maddening sketches on sheets of white paper.

Thus, the poem extols the power of nature to take care of itself and build anew. It mocks at man’s sense of superiority. This is where the poet rises to the level of the great poets of nature who worshiped nature more as a power than as a sensual experience.

Continuum: an Analysis

                  Continuum by Allen Curnow is a deeply spiritual poem though it is written in a candid and casual style. Reading between the lines, we find the poet guiding the reader through his abstract thoughts. 
                 'Continuum' means the transition from one to another, or a seamless conjunction of two entities. This is a popular word in modern physics where time and space are considered as two entities which can change into each other and usually exist as a couple, with one flowing into the other. The poet has structured his poem in such a way that the stanzas, except for the introductory one, flow into one another and do not stand as individual, stand aloof pieces. The transition happens in language as well as in the thoughts that the language expresses.

                   In the first stanza the poet calls our attention to a common misconception. The moon looks like,

                  “(it) rolls over the roof and falls behind

                    my house, and the moon does neither of these things,

                    I am talking about myself.

                So, the poet cites a cliché commonly found in poetry, and unmasks it to tell us that when we say things which are not true, we in fact reveal ourselves. We see things the way we are and not the way they are. The poet warns us that everything that he has written is only his own perception.

                These first lines frame the poem and serve as an introduction. When read in this light, the poem is more about creation, the poet’s and God’s. In the second stanza, the poet tells us we are absolutely programmed in our behavior and that we are not blessed with free will. We can’t think thoughts. They are spontaneous. We can’t even change the subject of our thought or go to sleep when we wish to. It is all predestined for us.

                Having nothing better to do the poet goes out on barefoot in the darkness. He leans from the porch across the hedges in his front courtyard over to where it is darker and nothing is distinguishable (washed-out creation). In the dark sky he spies two bright clouds, with moon’s dust on them. He inserts the word query in brackets to ask whether it is not just another beautiful phrase at the expense of reality. He likes one of the clouds for some personal reasons.

                                                                        “one’s mine

                      the other is an adversary,”

                Which is which will depend on how it is shaped by the wind and other things.

                Time moves slowly for him. In a very cryptic expression he quips,

               “A long moment stretches, the next one is not

                on time.”

              This may sound absurd since moments refer to time and time is never fast slow. Time has a set pace. However, we are reminded of the new idea in physics that time is relative, presumably a fact known to poets for long!

               Being barefooted the poet feels the chill of the cold floor not only on his feet but right up to his throat. Suddenly the night sky pours down as rain or fog or even as darkness. The poet has no choice but to go in. He turns on his heel and goes in closing the door behind him. The door is closed on the real author, God, who created all this. God is such a good craftsman who picks up his tools and his litter when he  is done. God urges the poet quietly back to bed.

                Overall, Continuum is a spiritual poem which makes no distinction between fact and fiction. It also shows the seamless merging of perception and observation. Insomnia or sleeplessness is something that happens to most writers. Usually writers write something to get out of it. Here a greater author, God Himself, urges the writer to go back to bed. Ironically, the writer manages to write a poem out of this experience. The artist and God are also seamlessly connected. They are both creative. God keeps his workshop clean, his tools ready and he keeps creating.

                “the author, cringing demiurge, who picks up

                  his litter and his tools…”

 The poet, on the other hand, feels frustration and sleeplessness and they motivate him to write poems.