![]() (As I write this, Eliot is peering at me beadily from under the handle of his umbrella, on the cover of John Haffenden’s newest installment of his letters). The line: ‘(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)’, with its beckoning brackets, seemed even more intimate, ironically enough, since I was reading it in the hope of reaching someone doubly absent. He was away for the weekend at home when I discovered Eliot, and I remember being hooked by the first lines, as though they were addressed to me. My boyfriend was known at uni for his long silences and aloofness, and my way of reading him was to read his books. ![]() ![]() I’d become used to staring at the book, alongside a gorgeous bright green copy of Nabokov’s Lolita, a thick white edition of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, William Carlos Williams’s Selected Poems, and the complete Alexander Pope. How did you first encounter it, and what do you remember about that encounter?īeci Carver: I had climbed through my college boyfriend’s open window and found Eliot on his shelf, where I knew he would be. In honor of the 100th anniversary of the publication of “The Waste Land,” we invited four writers and academics-Beci Carver, Jahan Ramazani, Robert Crawford, and David Barnes-to discuss the importance, context, artistry, and legacy of the poem.Ĭan you tell us a bit about your personal experience of reading the poem. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |