Week #9

T.S. Eliot: T.S. Eliot is a very good representative of Modernism in American Poetry because while he effectively writes everything that he wants to convey, he still comes across as a purely impersonal poet, using a “masque” through a “persona”; everything is always indiscreet. Nothing in Eliot’s poetry is direct; a reader has to read between Eliot’s lines to understand what he’s trying to say and what he’s trying to mean. For me personally, I have trouble with Eliot’s poetry because of the large number of allusions that he uses. I’m sure it was easier to a well-read individual early in the twentieth century to understand and get the references Eliot uses, but as time goes by the references will become more and more obscure and new generations of students will be baffled.