For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening—any evening—would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able . . .
~C.S. Lewis

I learned from a friend in college many years ago that you don’t read Eliot and other twentieth century poets the same way you read Tennyson or even The Odyssey. When I I first read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock or The Wasteland, I wanted the poems to tell a straightforward story, a narrative. Prufrock does sort of tell the story of a man who is trapped by his own ineffectualness and lack of confidence. But that poem and especially the other famous poems by Eliot, The Wasteland, Ash Wednesday, The Hollow Men, and Four Quartets all have to be read the same way I have to listen to contemporary song lyrics: pick out the lines and images that speak to you and don’t try too hard to make sense of the whole.

So, my favorite lines from T.S. Eliot:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
~The Hollow Men

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
~Ash Wednesday

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice.
~Ash Wednesday

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~Four Quartets

Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God.
~Murder in the Cathedral

“Reduced to its simplest and most essential form, the poem is a song. Song is neither discourse nor explanation.”~Octavio Paz

The story is that Leigh Hunt had been ill. Upon his recovery, he made a visit to his friend, Thomas Carlyle, and Carlyle’s wife, Jenny, greeted Hunt with a kiss. Hunt was friends with almost all the great British literary figures of the nineteenth century. He introduced Keats and Shelley to one another. In 1828 he published a book called Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries, a sort of expose of the “real Byron.” His friendship with Carlyle came a little later, in the 1830’s, after Keats and Shelley had died, and Byron and his friends scorned the poverty-stricken Hunt.

Kelly Fineman on Rondeau by James Henry Leigh Hunt.

” I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart—’The Battle of Hohenlinden’ and ‘dinburgh after Flodden,’ and ‘Bingen of the Rhine,’ and most of the ‘Lady of the Lake’ and most of ‘The Seasons’ by James Thompson. Don’t you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?”~Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Cindy at Ordo Amoris recommends The Art of Poetry by Christine Perrin and John Ciardi’s How Does a Poem Mean?, and I have yet to read either book in its entirety.

I did read enough of the Ciardi book to see that it would be a great text for a poetry class. If I ever manage to snag a job teaching such a class at our homeschool co-op, I will be sure to use one or both of these as a guide.

Here’s a sample poem by John Ciardi:

Before the children say goodnight,
Mother, Father, stop and think:
Have you screwed their heads on tight?
Have you washed their ears with ink?

Have you said and done and thought
All the earnest parents should?
Have you beaten them as you ought:
Have you begged them to be good?

And above all – when you start
Out the door and douse the light –
Think, be certain, search your heart:
Have you screwed their heads on tight?

If they sneeze when they’re asleep,
Will their little heads come off?
If they just breathe very deep?
If – especially – they cough?

Should – alas! – the little dears
Lose a little head or two,
Have you inked their little ears:
Girls’ ears pink and boys’ ears blue?

Children’s heads are very loose.
Mother, Father, screw them tight.
If you feel uncertain use
A monkey wrench, but do it right.

If a head should come unscrewed
You will know that you have failed.
Doubtful cases should be glued.
Stubborn cases should be nailed.

Then when all your darlings go
Sweetly screaming off to bed,
Mother, Father, you may know
Angels guard each little head.

Come the morning you will find
One by one each little head
Full of gentle thoughts and kind,
Sweetly screaming to be fed.

We use hands to tighten the head screws and no ink markings, and we haven’t lost a head yet.