The poem constantly shifts between different speakers without warning, and it's chock full of references to classic literature from cultures all over the world, many of which are more than a little obscure. Yep, there's no getting around it: 'The Waste Land' can be one tough cookie to read. Maybe what Eliot should have been concerned about was penning a poem that's considered incomprehensible by many first-time readers the world over. wrote the poem to end all poems in 1922, he still had some confidence issues. Eliot pretty much used every one of these suggestions, and even dedicated the poem to Pound, calling him ' il miglior fabbro' in the inscription, which is Italian for 'the better craftsman.' So yeah, even though T.S. handed the thing over to his buddy, Ezra Pound, who slashed a ton of material and made extensive editing suggestions. In its original draft, the poem was almost twice as long as the published version. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' has been called 'one of the most important poems of the 20th Century' and it might actually be one of the most important poems ever. Want more deets? We've also got a complete Online Course about The Waste Land, with three weeks worth of readings and activities to make sure you know your stuff. Eliot's The Waste Land: Poem Study Guide Introduction The first UK book edition was published by the Hogarth Press, run by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, in September 1923.T.S. In the US it appeared in the November 1922 issue of The Dial magazine.

The Waste Land was first published in the UK in the October 1922 issue of The Criterion, a literary magazine started and edited by Eliot. When Mr Eliot speaks in his own language and his own voice it is like this at one moment:įor the rest one can only say that if Mr Eliot had been pleased to write in demotic English The Waste Land might not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists and literati, so much waste paper. Lines of German, French, and Italian are thrown in at will or whim so too are solos from nightingales, cocks, hermit-thrushes, and Ophelia. Dr Fraser and Miss JL Weston are freely and admittedly his creditors, and the bulk of the poem is under an enormously composite and cosmopolitan mortgage to Spenser, Shakespeare, Webster, Kyd, Middleton, Marvell, Goldsmith, Ezekiel, Buddha, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, St Augustine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and others.

The waste land by ts eliot