Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Probably not the place to start.

Ok even OurDad says this one's a bit too much. I think you'd need two Ph D's to understand T.S Eliot's The Waste Land. Really OurDad's got one and he doesn't get this poem either.

If you ask me it's all wrong from the start. April is the cruelest month? I thought maybe this Eliot guy was from the southern hemisphere where the seasons are all reversed, but OurDad told us that he's from our old home town, St. Louis, but that he moved to England. What a turncoat! The snow is gone, Easter is coming, it's warm again, and most important the Cardinals are back for opening day in April. What kind of St. Louisan doesn't like April and the return of our beloved Cardinal baseball.

OurDad tried to explain something about irony, but I think the guy's off his rocker.

The poem's about a thousand lines long, but you can see where it's going right away so I just copied the first few lines. Oh and I took out all the crazy Latin and Greek at the beginning too. Crazy, just crazy.


The Waste Land

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

5 comments:

SourDad said...

Ok I promise something lighter for tomorrow. Of course The Waste Land gives me a lot of room.

Really I'll be going for accessible on most days.

Coffee-Drinking Woman said...

If you're doing TS Eliot, I dare, no, make that double-dare, you to post some of the crap from from the musical Cats, which I seem to remember was inspired by Eliot's Old Possum's guide to Practical Cats.

SourDad said...

The dare not taken...

No Way. It's bad enough that GreatMom loves show tunes. They're not getting that from me.

Miranda said...

I just want to thank you guys for making me have the soundtrack to Cats in my head all day. I hate Andrew Lloyd Weber and Cats is a big reason for that.

SourDad said...

Ok enough no more talk about Cats.

Any further comments related to musicals at all will be deleted. =)