Happy 100th Year Prufrock

Happy 100th Year Prufrock
2015. 100 years ago now this year, Ezra Pound threw T.S. Eliot into the deep end of the pool when she sent his Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock off to the magazine Poetry in Chicago and it was published. Technically the poem itself is 105 years old this year seeing as though it sat on a shelf for five years before Ezra saved it from obscurity.

Do you like poetry? I am a very casual poetry fan. But I am an ardent T.S. Eliot fan. I’ve read every word he’s written, some of it much better than others. All of it just fascinating to me though. I still remember exactly where I was sitting when I was first read The Love Song. I mean the seat. Which seat. In which school classroom. I could drive 2,000 miles today and point at a spot in a room that is still standing and I could say, there. That is where I was when I heard it first.

My first impression of it though was of just utter confusion. My teacher had announced the title, and had even asked us to find the themes of love and of romance throughout as he read it. And then he read, and read, and read. And all I could think at first was… this poor guy is flaming out everywhere. There is nothing happening that is good for him, at all.

And even so I just didn’t understand any of it.  And then the teacher began asking the class about it – and no one else got it either.  And then line by line he walked through it and explained the social and historical context of the poem.  It was like someone had just lifted the shades, literally.  It was an astounding, epiphanic experience.  Like, just awe inspiring.  And it is still worth mentioning that the opening of this now 100 year old poem is still one of the most recognized openings of all literature.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Let me repeat that for you.  Like a patient etherized upon a table… he just likened the evening to a dead guy on a slab.  That’s our Prufrock.  A deadman walking.  As are we.  Man, I can’t even tell you what this poem does to me.  There are a few other poets that can get reach maybe a hint of what Eliot can – maybe E. E. Cummings.  A few others?  But nothing like Eliot.  I also do backflips when reading his Hollow Men as well.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

So, Eliot is definitely one of the world’s great poets.  But more specifically, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock speaks to the deep inner gloom of modern life.  Of our desire for meaning in the face of an inability to connect with others, and receive the love we most hope for.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

How should we presume?  Beneath the music, the voices and the murmurs, and the piles of coffee spoons, evenings and afternoons?  Just so much goodness there in one stanza.  So, to you Mr. Eliot, thank you for bringing Love Song into being.  A poem that has captured the desire and longings of a generation.  No, not of a generation, but of an entire civilization.  Happy 100th birthday to the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock!