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Keillor is at his best telling Lutheran jokes. His literary tastes suck. He probably likes lutefisk too. Eliot made poetry dark and gloomy? As Alison notes, he had lots of predecessors Keillor either has not read or whom he's chosen to ignore for the sake of a few cheap laughs. I first read Prufrock in a college 2nd semester literature survey back when everyone had to take a year of BritLit. I somehow believed Eliot was going to be difficult because he was (hautboys and tucket) Modern. Upon opening Prufrock I thought "Either I'm smarter than I thought or this is no big deal." The latter. The Waste Land was infuriating in 1961 and it still is. I dislike poets who condescend to me by parking footnotes in their own work. We never studied Pound formally in any English course. Pound didn't translate his Greek and Chinese phrases. Get it or don't. I got tastes of him on my own--reading the Pisan Cantos under the covers with a flashlight. No Greek or Chinese. Now *this* was difficult, this was sinew to chew on. Still is. I don't believe anyone got even to first base with a lady by reading a canto with "Pull down thy vanity" in it--she might think it meant "Pull down thy skirt." Eliot did nice things with religious poetry but Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, Juan de la Cruz, and Hopkins were better. You get the idea. KW -- -------------------- Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came."