Presentation on a Short Poem Written by T. S. Eliot-Cousin Nancy

T.S. Eliot, was a renowned poet within the early 20th century whose poetry was largely influenced by the effects of the modernism era. His poems were reflective of contextual concerns such as the Enlightenment period, and largely explored the thematic concerns of desire whilst simultaneously exploiting the tension of human suffering. Eliot, in his poems, explores the ambiguity of identity explicitly through both The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and Prelude. Both poems examine the complexities of human suffering through a post World War climate and capitalises upon the revolution of industrialisation. Concurrently, the excerpt of Jeanette Winterson's critique and commentary of Eliot's poetry within the BBC documentary, Arena: T.S. Eliot

Poetry can sometimes allow one to explore the unknown. However, in some works of poetry, one can realise that some known ideas or values remain relevant to current society. This is certainly applicable to T.S. Eliot’s poems, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Eliot’s manipulation of poetic techniques in both these poems allows the responder to realise that some ideas prevail in both modern and post-modern society. These poems explore the unknown phenomena of the obscurity regarding the purpose and meaning of life. This unknown phenomena causes the persona in both texts to resort to a sense of isolation or alienation. Eliot uses poetic techniques such as metaphors and personification to convey his ideas.

Amy Lowell’s poem is about a woman in the 18th century, whom is bound by her own society as most women were at the time. One of the examples that showed her shackled and imprisoned was made apparent on how she dressed in the quote “Held rigid to the pattern, by the stiffness of my gown,” the gown stiffness here represent a symbol of her society and how she was held by it every single day in her life. Her society at that time wanted women to act passively by not expressing their feelings and emotions fully. Therefore, She tried to break the “pattern” in her life, by marrying her to be husband, whom she was in love with, but she was not able to express her emotions fully. Because her lover died in a war, to an extent when she heard the news about his death, she was not able to express her grief as society did not welcome this kind of behavior, making her stuck in this pattern, this Application of T.S. Eliot Theory on Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” will try to find whether Amy passes the Eliotian test of writing a successful modern poem or not.

T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," despite being one of T.S Eliot 's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he hesitates the entire way there. In this poem, the theme I have chosen is fragmentation, which we can see throughout the entire structure of the work. It 's evidenced by not only his writing style, but the use of space and time and the personality of Prufrock.

¨The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock¨, a poem by T.S. Eliot, was written shortly after WW1, a war that left millions dead or scarred for life. The subject of this poem, J. Alfred Prufrock is a victim of this terrible event. After the war, his life has drastically changed. Feelings of insignificance, looking a fool, and growing old are all characterized by Eliot’s repetition for effect, ambiguity, and allusion.

The poet creates these emotions for the reader when he talks about how the narrator’s mother cannot protect herself anymore. The narrator talks about how he has to protect her: “So I protect her from knives, / stairs, from the street that calls / as rivers do, a summons to walk away, to follow” (12-15). The tone for this poem is downhearted, gloomy, and distressed. The author displays his feelings toward the subject of the poem when he shows that the narrator knows she will never remember his name, even though he is helping her so much. The narrator shows these feelings after he helps his mother get dressed: “when she sometimes looks up / and says my name, the sound arriving / like the thrill of a bird so rare / it’s rumored no longer to exist”

In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Love is not all” is a sonnet with the traditional octave and set in fourteen line style. The focus of the poem is to address the personal message addressing the question of the depth importance and nature of love. The first six lines of the sonnet are a negative meaning for what love is not and what it cannot do. The Sixth line of the poem is a clipped irony bringing the reader to the harsh reality that one without love is soon to possibly live on while making friends with death.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock” may be accurately described as an amalgam of synergistic emotions—among them self-doubt, longing, fear, regret, and indecisiveness—which, through the alchemy of poetry, work in tandem to create and communicate an overwhelming sense of anxiety. These emotions serve as cataracts upon the lens through which the poem’s narrator views both himself and the city streets he travels. Overwhelmed by an “overwhelming question” (10) the narrator—perhaps more terrified by the sheer gravity of the “overwhelming question” (10) than the numerous other fears and self-doubts the narrator presents to the reader—never unequivocally specifies, the poem’s persona makes a journey through both city and mind to

T.S. Eliot was one among few poets and authors that dominated the years between the First and Second World Wars. Eliot showed his use of modernism techniques through “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, creating a powerful reputation around the world, particularly as a member of The Lost Generation in the 1920s. Eliot moved to and settled in London where he worked with famous poets including Ezra Pound, and published his first collection of poems (McMichael 1358). “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is a famous work that was almost a mockery of the romance-driven main character of the story, as it represented the indecisiveness of a personality and the superiority of an anti-romanticism ideal.

Eliot masterfully uses simile and figurative imagery in “The Love Song of J, Alfred Prufrock.” Eliot's use of simile is best found in the poem's famous opening line: “Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table” (1,2,3). Here, Prufrock punctuates his personal invitation to the reader with simile intend to create vivid images in the mind of the reader. Prufrock's descriptive control of the poem is of subtle but crucial importance to the poem.

Despite the fact that T.S.Eliot has called for the impersonality of poetry yet, all the assets in this poem of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock infer that of T.S. Eliot himself.

Dunn, I. (1963). Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Explicator, 22(1), 178. doi: 0014-4940-1290286285

the poem and each of the arguments it leaves. In addition, she offers her own opinion, which

It is the prime time of the American Revolution, and a meer woman has written this poem on the frightful times she is facing. In the poem this we see a series of eventful occurrences happen. We start the poem with a question of a distant sound, then we delve into the fight as the scarlet soldiers siege this woman’s property, and all the neighboring farms. As this woman watches all of this play out, her husband finds himself caught in the middle of having to leave and his wife begging him not to, threatening the sacredy of their wedding vows.

T.S. Eliot was an outstanding author and an exemplary representation of the ideas of modernism. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," despite being one of T.S Eliot's earliest publications, still manages to remain one of the most famous. He uses this poem to not only draw out the psychological aspect of members of modern society, but also to draw out the aspect of the time that he lived in. The speaker of this poem is a modern man who feels alone, isolated, and incapable of making decisive actions for himself. Prufrock desires to speak to a woman about his love for her, but he continuously hesitates while attempting to do so. This poem demonstrates a theme of fragmentation, which is a theme that we can see throughout the entire