{Journal Entry #12} Memory... All alone in the moonlight, I can dream of the old days... Life was beautiful then

So much has been said and written about Eliot (and Pound, and their modernist ideas), that instead of putting my two cents in, I'll just talk about cats and how we fought in class.

Famous for his deliberate poetic obscurity, Thomas Stearnes Eliot was also a catlover, something I was not aware of before this class, and definitely made me warm up to Eliot even more. I also learnt that his feline work was the inspiration for Cats the musical (yep, you heard that right), so... doesn't that put "The Hollow Men" in perspective? 

Cat poetry aside, our friend Eliot's magnum opus is The Wasteland, a dense (yet fascinating) five-part poem about generalized disillusionment, the devastation of World War I, and the collective trauma that makes communication and connection in the modern times basically impossible. The poem is full of references, and Ezra Pound, Eliot's confidante and merciless editor, cut everything that was too clear and/or unnecessary. 

In class, we discussed the value of this fragmented intertextual approach to poetry, especially when Eliot's initial publication did not include notes. The general consensus is that poetry should be accesible and that . My mind was boggled and I was a vocal dissenter.

The discussion got heated. Especially in the age of google, you'd think this type of poetry would be more fun and easy to decode than ever. It seems this is not so; in the age of information, apparently any that is withheld, even in playful creation, is frowned upon. What confounds me further is the fact that this is the decade of the meme, of The Office/John Mulaney/The Simpsons/Game of Thrones/etc.  references in common speech, of reblogging and reposting—intertextuality is everywhere! Are you kidding me? Somehow, the idea that TV or internet are massive, but poetry is not, gives the former the right to be intertextual and the latter the label of elitist. Yet if you do not know anything about Game of Thrones, "you know nothing" does not really mean anything, does it? The effect increases if you consider that in Eliot's time there was a more standard set of elements to reference (Classical literature, religion, French and Latin were fair game for most authors), but nowadays there is an infinite number of niches, each with their own set of memes/references/anecdotes/jokes/content. So why does Eliot get the short end of the stick?

It's ok if you don't like it, or that you don't want to read up on religion or mythology to "get" it, but I think some of my classmates are overtly harsh with Eliot for doing something that is actually the norm nowadays. In general, it appears that a new yardstick for poetry (and literature in general) is mass appeal, which is odd considering we also enjoy the idea of cult classics and Easter Eggs in games and fiction. Oh, well.