All I can say in reply is that poets create in dialogue with each other,
even if you hate Eliot you are in dialogue through your rebelllion (I don't
want to start another arguement though!) :-) Whitman especially consciously
'speaks' to people in the future. Readers are directly addressed by Whitman
in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" : Just as you feel when you look on the river
and sky, so I felt, / Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one
of a crowd, / Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the
bright flow, I was refresh'd." I'd say Eliot was in dialogue with the past
and the future when he drafted The Wasteland. His work is his part of the
ongoing dialogue. The 'April is the cruellest month' goes right back through
Tennyson to Chaucer and who knows who gave Chaucer the idea. Some farmer
whose crop died in the frost maybe. I read in a book about literature and
Freud's idea of 'the uncanny', (by Nicholas Royle) that it is possible that
The Wasteland is written from the point of view of a buried corpse.... well,
it is now if it wasn't then!
Good luck with your essay, I'd be interested to read it and as for your
problems with it I'll quote another poet "the answer my friend, is blowing
in the wind".
X
p.s. (think of the heat generated by all your mown grass :-)
X
>From: Edmund Hardy <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Help! The grass is singing
>Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:23:15 +0000
>
>>Thought I'd throw in a few dots to follow if you're interested :-)
>
>Yes, Thanks for these dots - much appreciated
>
>Whitman is actually the co-subject with Reznikoff of my troubled troubled
>essay - the grass there is surely the anti-grass of Eliot's dryness - Eliot
>prays for renewal, but Whitman is sure of it, the cycle - in the Mahler,
>ewig, ewig...
>
>I'm really interested in writers who Create the grass as a style, but then
>Eliot came in & crashed down on me -
>
>Whitman hears a territory singing, but What The Thunder Said hears ...
>grass over the tumbled graves - the dead singing?
>
>The Carlyle is v. interesting that he says "grass" and not "grain of sand"
>- but grass & sand seem to conflate as ideas of "world flesh"
>
>My trouble is - if i pursue "grass" as a metaphor it will go everywhere and
>i'd e the hopeless & hapless mower -
>
>Edmund
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