Walking and words

As I walk most mornings, I enjoy listening to audio books on my mP3 player. I am also a cheap person, so most of what I listen to are theological titles from the monthly free offerings at christianaudio.com (Check out their monthly free downloads: they are fabulous!) But earlier this week, I listened to a poem I had downloaded elsewhere (can't remember right now where). I decided it was time to re-tackle T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland. I read this poem last in college, and felt that I liked it and understood it then. But my poetry reading hasn't been as deep and wide lately as it should be. So I took the plunge into Eliot, and soon found myself in over my head.

It didn't help, of course, that being the technology neophyte that I am, somehow my mP3 player is on "shuffle" and I can't get it off. The poem is broken into 3-4 minute audio "chapters", and when it began, it was shuffling them up. It was very chaotic! Once I realized what it was doing, I clicked each time we ended a "chapter" and started the right one. {Anyone know how to turn the "shuffle" off?}

Once I heard it in order, it made more sense to me, but only slightly. Of course, there were the famous lines (April is the cruelest month...) and the words of Eliot are often musical and lovely, and the allusions are sometimes accessible to me. But when I got home, still clueless about much of the poem (except the third man image, which seemed pretty clear to me...), I pulled out my old Oxford Anthology of British Literature. There I found the poem, and an introduction, with my own notes scribbled all around in the margines. But reading my notes and the introduction didn't help. The introductions of the 80's, it seems, were largely a Freudian/Jungian affair, and they were pushing the "There is no order in the poem" premise. Well, I just didn't buy it.

So, I turned to my T.S. Eliot-loving, literature-loving children, Ben and Elsa. I sent an e-mail that basically said, "OK, guys, I'm' lost. Sum up the structure and meaning for me, will ya?" I got a delightful e-mail back quickly, with many lovely ideas on form and meaning, and that was followed up with a lovely phone conversation, filled with more ideas about Eliot, his relationship with Ezra Pound, his imitation of Dante and Virgil, his references to the Arthurian legend, other works of his I should read, and much other amicable word-talk. It was delightful, and made me grateful for many things: that I can read and enjoy literature and poetry, that I have knowledgeable children who can explain it to me, that Ben and Elsa can converse on the same level and challenge one another in these intellectual things, and that they think I kind of understand what they are saying (though that often involves giving me too much credit!)