NationStates Jolt Archive

I've already seen that a few of you write some poetry so how about discussing some. I've been reading through the works of T.S Eliot lately and have found a lot of meaning in some of them. So what are your thought opions ect on this piece of work. Or post a poem you like and I'll tell you what I think.

The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Hemingway once complained that T.S. Eliot should have changed his name to S.T. Eliot. Then he could call him Toilets.

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.


Ursula Le Guin.

A couple years back, I had to do a paper on The Hollow Men in english class. In our discussions about it, everyone (except me; I just listened) had pretty much determined that it was about Purgatory. Let me see what I can remember...

I: The hollow men are the people lost in Purgatory. When they say they're hollow, it means they're without conviction, hence they are neither worthy of Heaven nor Hell. They're stuffed in the sense that their "filling" is fake and meaningless. Everything else sort of goes along with this general theme.

II: Here they're referring to God, and how they don't want to admit something in relation to him (that he exists, that they really are without conviction, or something else along those lines), and so instead of facing him, they look away, hide, and try to disguise themselves so they will be avoided.

III: This described the environment of Purgatory. The bit about making prayers to dead stones was...uh...I believe, something about worshipping false idols and the like.

IV: God has looked away, and now the hollow men are starting to reconsider their position.

V: Again, references to what Purgatory is, and why people would be sent there--they lack conviction, remaining between the extremes.

I think it's an interesting view. Personally, I'm really bad at analyzing poetry (probably because I never try).

A friend of mine wrote these today:


Head held high,
Beauty is me,
My life is a dance,
Watch me twirl,
And spin the ballet of love and trust,
Trust is a rose,
But roses die,
As does my heart,
My soul,
My worth,
When I watch you walk away again,
Leave me for another time,
Another place,
Another person,
I loved and trusted,
Life was good,
But roses die,
And by my hand,
Your fate is that of a rose.


----------------------------------------------------------------


Insults I can handle,
Though they make me cry,
But there is something much worse,
That hurts deeper inside.

I sadly lost my best friend once,
To a cooler group,
Well she’s one of them now,
And I’m out of the loop.

That stupid mini skirt she owns,
Her constant chewing gum state,
Her giggle instead of laughter,
All things we used to hate.

Oh we talk every now and then,
But never like we used to,
We talk about very little things,
Whatever else is new.

Well I was trying to move on,
I thought my friend was dead,
But I’m talking to her once again,
Inside of letters instead.

I’ve got back my old friend,
The one that laughed from the heart,
We can be completely stupid,
No longer far apart.

But I’ll never like that miniskirt,
Not because it shows her belly,
Just because of what it stands for,
The lost innocence of my Ali

I dont really read poetry, i write it myself. I have been praised upon for such "good" work. Ofcourse, most things we do seem easy once compleated :D