Eliot

After watching the biographical information on Eliot this past week I have a completely different view on his life and personality. In previous classes, after reading the short biographies usually proceeding “The Waste Land” and “Prufrock” I was left with few facts. I knew that he was one of the most popular poets of his time and I also knew about the intellectual aspects of his poetry. I always pictured him as a snob, sitting around drinking brandy, trying to come up with ways to baffle his readers with allusions of previous eras. OK, so he may still have been like that, but now I see a different side of him. He was withdrawn. He suffered tremendously over his wife’s illness. He even had an adorable relationship with his little goddaughter.

I was really happy that we got to watch to biography on Eliot while we were still reading his poetry. When we were studying Yeats, we read all of his poetry and then watched the biographical info. I think that if I would have had a better understanding of his life, I would have looked at his poetry differently. With Eliot, I absolutely know that I looked at his poetry in a different light after understanding his biography.

I really enjoyed “Journey of the Magi.” It was the first poem by Eliot that I was able understand after my first reading. I was really drawn to the fact that I was able to see a completely different side of the story of the wise men. They would have suffered under the harsh conditions of the journey, “a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp/The very dead of winter.” Also, I appreciated the symbolism in the second stanza. I recognized that the three trees and old white horse were symbols (I had them underlined) but had no idea what they meant. I appreciated being enlightened in class yesterday.