(no subject)

[jazzfish]

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.

I love Eliot's work. I do. I just hate this part of writing a paper-- when I've pretty much got the 'outline' done, and there's nothing for it but to dive in and start banging out sentences, and occasionally trying to work in a reference to another bit of criticism so I can meet the Six Outside Sources requirement.
I don't mind building the outline-- that doesn't require that I string ideas together coherently. I don't mind piecing together the bits after I've written them. If I ever had time, I wouldn't mind giving the whole thing a once-over to make sure it hangs together properly. It's the actual creation itself that bogs me down.

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once as handsome as you.

I dunno. The Waste Land and The Hollow Men are brilliant, and of course "Prufrock" and "Gerontion" are good, but Ash-Wednesday and the Quartets are too formal and stilted for my taste. Give me Yeats any day.

Comments

[zerblinitzky.livejournal.com]

Always preferred Tennyson and Kipling, myself.
This (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/tennyson1c.html), and this (http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_brigade.htm), are two of the best poems ever written.

[jazzfish]

Based on what little I've read I declare both Tennyson and Kipling to be Not Bad, although K. has some known lapses ("White Man's Burden" anyone?). I just personally prefer the Moderns.