I love TS Eliot. ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‘ is one of my favourite English-language poems… perhaps my very favourite. (Those who think they know me won’t be surprised. Those who do might be.)
But I don’t fully get The Waste Land. I’ve read the poem a couple dozen times, and my current slow reading is the first in which I’ve begun to actually understand. I needed BC Southam’s help.
In the poem, Eliot repeatedly refers to London as the un-something city. That phrase has caught me every time I’ve read the poem, and I’ve thought ‘Yes. London will be my un-something city.’
So why is it that I can never remember, five minutes later, what that something is?
(Unreal.)