Our class met again on Monday. To my students both the cost and the brevity of the book had been a pleasant surprise.
“Only four dollars!” one student exclaimed. “And I was so happy it was short—until I tried to read it!”
Predictably, like so many of the poem’s readers three generations before, my students were intimidated, frustrated, baffled, bored, and intrigued by the learned Eliot’s arcane and esoteric references and allusions and by his illogical and psychological non-linear organization. Two or three good students, unfamiliar with poetry but determined to apply themselves, reacted to their first look at The Waste Land with a refreshing and ingenuous awe. They were impressed simply by the startling surface appearance of the text, by its linguistic complexity, foreign languages, and variety of stanzaic forms, and they were energized by their own excitement at being in college and by having been assigned to read such an uncommon book. Two or three more seemed interested mainly in making a favorable first impression upon their instructor. They responded with effusive praise oddly off the mark.
“I just love poetry,” a woman volunteered. “It’s so beautiful!”
“This is the greatest book I’ve ever read!” one young man who looked no more than eighteen years old informed me. His statement might very well have been true but, I suspected, probably not quite in the sense which he intended.
“Tell me why,” I prompted.
“It just is!”
His upturned palms he lifted in an expansive gesture of praise and adoration. He raised his eyes to gaze at the ceiling as if God were there and opened his mouth as if to say awe. I thought he might be stoned. His eyes looked open too wide. Still, we had only just met. I stuffed my misgivings. He had come to class early, he said, to tell me how delighted he was with the poem, with the class, and with me. He extended his hand and I shook it.
“I just want to thank you for introducing me to it,” he said.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it,” I said. “Do you read a lot of poetry?”
“No, but I write it,” he replied. “I’m a poem guy.”
Later in the quarter he would bring in a thin portfolio of his hand-written verse for me to read, nearly all of it a meditation on the depression, drug addiction, and attempted suicide of his girlfriend. I found it both interesting and sad, and I encouraged him to write more of it and to bring it in to me again.
Many students, a dozen or so, a clear plurality, reacted to The Waste Land with incomprehension and indifference and assumed I would—just as their high school English teachers had always done—eventually explain to them all of what they called the hidden meanings of the poem. Ho hum, some yawned, acting out broadly for me and for their neighbors their impatience with the tedium of this whole required English business. This response I had anticipated. But others reacted with annoyance, irritation, and even anger. This I had not expected. Two or three were downright mad. They came to class huffing and cursing, having spent over the weekend hours and hours, they claimed, trying futilely to make sense of this assigned reading. One young man claimed that Eliot’s poem had kept him up all night long.
“It made me so furious that five or six times I threw it on the floor and literally jumped up and down on it and I came this close to actually ripping its pages to shreds!” he exclaimed. He held up his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart to show the class and me how narrow had been his book’s escape.
“What is it about the poem that provoked you so?” I asked.
“It makes no sense!” he shouted.
.......................................
WASTE to be continued
“Only four dollars!” one student exclaimed. “And I was so happy it was short—until I tried to read it!”
Predictably, like so many of the poem’s readers three generations before, my students were intimidated, frustrated, baffled, bored, and intrigued by the learned Eliot’s arcane and esoteric references and allusions and by his illogical and psychological non-linear organization. Two or three good students, unfamiliar with poetry but determined to apply themselves, reacted to their first look at The Waste Land with a refreshing and ingenuous awe. They were impressed simply by the startling surface appearance of the text, by its linguistic complexity, foreign languages, and variety of stanzaic forms, and they were energized by their own excitement at being in college and by having been assigned to read such an uncommon book. Two or three more seemed interested mainly in making a favorable first impression upon their instructor. They responded with effusive praise oddly off the mark.
“I just love poetry,” a woman volunteered. “It’s so beautiful!”
“This is the greatest book I’ve ever read!” one young man who looked no more than eighteen years old informed me. His statement might very well have been true but, I suspected, probably not quite in the sense which he intended.
“Tell me why,” I prompted.
“It just is!”
His upturned palms he lifted in an expansive gesture of praise and adoration. He raised his eyes to gaze at the ceiling as if God were there and opened his mouth as if to say awe. I thought he might be stoned. His eyes looked open too wide. Still, we had only just met. I stuffed my misgivings. He had come to class early, he said, to tell me how delighted he was with the poem, with the class, and with me. He extended his hand and I shook it.
“I just want to thank you for introducing me to it,” he said.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it,” I said. “Do you read a lot of poetry?”
“No, but I write it,” he replied. “I’m a poem guy.”
Later in the quarter he would bring in a thin portfolio of his hand-written verse for me to read, nearly all of it a meditation on the depression, drug addiction, and attempted suicide of his girlfriend. I found it both interesting and sad, and I encouraged him to write more of it and to bring it in to me again.
Many students, a dozen or so, a clear plurality, reacted to The Waste Land with incomprehension and indifference and assumed I would—just as their high school English teachers had always done—eventually explain to them all of what they called the hidden meanings of the poem. Ho hum, some yawned, acting out broadly for me and for their neighbors their impatience with the tedium of this whole required English business. This response I had anticipated. But others reacted with annoyance, irritation, and even anger. This I had not expected. Two or three were downright mad. They came to class huffing and cursing, having spent over the weekend hours and hours, they claimed, trying futilely to make sense of this assigned reading. One young man claimed that Eliot’s poem had kept him up all night long.
“It made me so furious that five or six times I threw it on the floor and literally jumped up and down on it and I came this close to actually ripping its pages to shreds!” he exclaimed. He held up his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart to show the class and me how narrow had been his book’s escape.
“What is it about the poem that provoked you so?” I asked.
“It makes no sense!” he shouted.
.......................................
WASTE to be continued
