It didn’t seem worthwhile to mention this earlier, but now that people are throwing anecdotes around I might as well add mine: Prufrock is one of my very favorite poems. It’s wonderfully evocative, generates emotional torque deftly without getting maudlin, and it’s packed with beautiful phrases: there’s hardly a line in there that doesn’t have something that’d scan well as the title of another work. Granted, the theme of middle-aged middle-class frustration isn’t universally palatable, but if you can stomach that it’s got a lot to recommend it.
It’s also pretty straightforward as Eliot goes, really; if you’re looking for examples, The Waste Land is just as beloved of English departments and a lot more opaque and less conventional.
I love the poem, but I wonder whether that’s because it was the first work I read that made my standard teenage social anxieties into something profound- the fear of becoming an adult who blends into the scenery, an acquaintance to all but an intimate to none. (Note that Eliot himself was extremely young when he wrote it.) If some other work did the same thing for you, then you couldn’t have the same experience again with Prufrock. It’s much better done than the sort of thing that most teens project themselves into, of course, but it’s still as fundamentally a teenage work as most rock songs are.
I think it’s for the same reason that most people who never saw Star Wars when they were a kid don’t see what the fuss is about when they watch it as an adult.
Good point. For me, the huge SFX jump in my childhood was Jurassic Park- I can’t imagine that someone who grew up after the early 90s would attach as much emotional valence to such a corny story as I did, now that its disbelief-shattering CGI is commonplace.
My younger brother and I were indeed duly impressed by the effects in Jurassic Park… but we also thought the movie itself was rather silly.
When I went to see Star Wars in the theater during the re-release, I was rather surprised at how little there was to it, especially when compared to all the other things set in the same universe that I’d already been exposed to. I basically had the same reaction to the original trilogy that it seems that most people had to the prequel trilogy. (Of the six movies, Attack of the Clones was actually the one that I liked the best; it was the only one that even tried to have Hidden Depths.)
I’ll chime in. I quite like the lines, “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;...”
Also, the tone of the poem itself is quite dismal and deals with basic existential dread and a sort of mean loneliness, which (when I first read it as a teenager) seemed incredibly poignant and touching. Perhaps it seems a bit less fraught with meaning when those concerns don’t press as heavily on the mind, but it left an emotional impact on me. I also like the things less easy to justify objectively; I like the imagery and rhythm of the poem, though others may not.
I can see how it may seem a bit wankish with the Dante’s Inferno quote at the beginning and some of the more oblique turns it takes before getting to a point, but I like it nonetheless. Poetry is strange; I can read a poem and like it or not like it after a few minutes of reflection, but I have to really think about it to justify my feelings if I am to try and explain it to someone else.
“Do I dare
/Disturb the universe?
/In a minute there is time
/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse”
The “coffee spoons” line gets a lot of love, deservedly, but that passage is what sticks with me, that and the callback later in the poem “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”
My metric for good poetry is that it should still echo in my mind after I’ve stopped reading it, I’ve stopped thinking about it, and I’ve moved on to other things. By that metric “Prufrock” is a good poem, certainly the best of Eliot’s poetry that I’ve read.
Positively.
What do you like about that poem?
It didn’t seem worthwhile to mention this earlier, but now that people are throwing anecdotes around I might as well add mine: Prufrock is one of my very favorite poems. It’s wonderfully evocative, generates emotional torque deftly without getting maudlin, and it’s packed with beautiful phrases: there’s hardly a line in there that doesn’t have something that’d scan well as the title of another work. Granted, the theme of middle-aged middle-class frustration isn’t universally palatable, but if you can stomach that it’s got a lot to recommend it.
It’s also pretty straightforward as Eliot goes, really; if you’re looking for examples, The Waste Land is just as beloved of English departments and a lot more opaque and less conventional.
I love the poem, but I wonder whether that’s because it was the first work I read that made my standard teenage social anxieties into something profound- the fear of becoming an adult who blends into the scenery, an acquaintance to all but an intimate to none. (Note that Eliot himself was extremely young when he wrote it.) If some other work did the same thing for you, then you couldn’t have the same experience again with Prufrock. It’s much better done than the sort of thing that most teens project themselves into, of course, but it’s still as fundamentally a teenage work as most rock songs are.
I think it’s for the same reason that most people who never saw Star Wars when they were a kid don’t see what the fuss is about when they watch it as an adult.
The other thing about Stars Wars is that it was a huge jump in the quality of special effects.
Even though I was past the age to really imprint on it, seeing that battle cruiser go past and past and past overhead is a treasured memory.
Now, big special effects sf movies are routine.
Good point. For me, the huge SFX jump in my childhood was Jurassic Park- I can’t imagine that someone who grew up after the early 90s would attach as much emotional valence to such a corny story as I did, now that its disbelief-shattering CGI is commonplace.
My younger brother and I were indeed duly impressed by the effects in Jurassic Park… but we also thought the movie itself was rather silly.
When I went to see Star Wars in the theater during the re-release, I was rather surprised at how little there was to it, especially when compared to all the other things set in the same universe that I’d already been exposed to. I basically had the same reaction to the original trilogy that it seems that most people had to the prequel trilogy. (Of the six movies, Attack of the Clones was actually the one that I liked the best; it was the only one that even tried to have Hidden Depths.)
I’ll chime in. I quite like the lines, “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;...”
Also, the tone of the poem itself is quite dismal and deals with basic existential dread and a sort of mean loneliness, which (when I first read it as a teenager) seemed incredibly poignant and touching. Perhaps it seems a bit less fraught with meaning when those concerns don’t press as heavily on the mind, but it left an emotional impact on me. I also like the things less easy to justify objectively; I like the imagery and rhythm of the poem, though others may not.
I can see how it may seem a bit wankish with the Dante’s Inferno quote at the beginning and some of the more oblique turns it takes before getting to a point, but I like it nonetheless. Poetry is strange; I can read a poem and like it or not like it after a few minutes of reflection, but I have to really think about it to justify my feelings if I am to try and explain it to someone else.
“Do I dare /Disturb the universe? /In a minute there is time /For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse”
The “coffee spoons” line gets a lot of love, deservedly, but that passage is what sticks with me, that and the callback later in the poem “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”
My metric for good poetry is that it should still echo in my mind after I’ve stopped reading it, I’ve stopped thinking about it, and I’ve moved on to other things. By that metric “Prufrock” is a good poem, certainly the best of Eliot’s poetry that I’ve read.
Also, those passages may be of interest to LW—there might be some clues about akrasia.