05-28-2026, 11:08 AM
[quote="busker" pid='281014' dateline='1779918444
matsun - I would if I had the time, but specifically for Eliot: I actually love his verse.
It is hypnotic.
The last couple of strophes from East Coker get your hair on end. I recite them oft from memory when I’m walking the dog and need something other than my business biography audiobook (apparently Jensen Huang has no time for literature but is a voracious reader of business books, this despite being one of the finest chip designers of his time and the founder of NVIDIA).
“Multifoliate rose” and “tumid river” coming as they do when they do in the Hollow Men are genius.
But Mahomet, the celebrated and deeply venerated prophet of the Saracens, warned against poetry for this very reason. It can lead readers away from the true path.
In this instance, Eliot seduces you into believing that there’s a world view underneath all those layers of hypnotic verse that is not about eating and drinking the supposed saviour and waiting for him to make a re entry upon large accumulations of water vapour. But there isn’t, and so you’re left with the unpleasant prospect of realising that the town supply of hot water that kept you warm through winter was actually coming from heat exchangers at the furnaces in Auschwitz.
This is not the problem when we read Spenser, because we assume that in all matters related to actually understanding how the world works, he is an idiot as is everyone else of his generation. His art is Neanderthal art, but charmingly so. There’s a lost innocence in the savagery of the past.
Larkin is a pure wanker. That’s for another time.
[/quote]
Interesting. I guess we have very different perspectives on what makes poetry valuable or worthy. for me Eliot and Larkin both vividly reinvigorate the symbolic powers of the English word, which is good enough for me.
matsun - I would if I had the time, but specifically for Eliot: I actually love his verse.
It is hypnotic.
The last couple of strophes from East Coker get your hair on end. I recite them oft from memory when I’m walking the dog and need something other than my business biography audiobook (apparently Jensen Huang has no time for literature but is a voracious reader of business books, this despite being one of the finest chip designers of his time and the founder of NVIDIA).
“Multifoliate rose” and “tumid river” coming as they do when they do in the Hollow Men are genius.
But Mahomet, the celebrated and deeply venerated prophet of the Saracens, warned against poetry for this very reason. It can lead readers away from the true path.
In this instance, Eliot seduces you into believing that there’s a world view underneath all those layers of hypnotic verse that is not about eating and drinking the supposed saviour and waiting for him to make a re entry upon large accumulations of water vapour. But there isn’t, and so you’re left with the unpleasant prospect of realising that the town supply of hot water that kept you warm through winter was actually coming from heat exchangers at the furnaces in Auschwitz.
This is not the problem when we read Spenser, because we assume that in all matters related to actually understanding how the world works, he is an idiot as is everyone else of his generation. His art is Neanderthal art, but charmingly so. There’s a lost innocence in the savagery of the past.
Larkin is a pure wanker. That’s for another time.
[/quote]
Interesting. I guess we have very different perspectives on what makes poetry valuable or worthy. for me Eliot and Larkin both vividly reinvigorate the symbolic powers of the English word, which is good enough for me.