Encore for Eliot's Prufrock
Because I really like it. And I'm pretty sure that T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is a favorite of many. (It is a longish poem, so I just gave a link, instead of copying the entire text here. Reading it in its entirety is highly recommended.) The poem is from the collection "Prufrock and Other Observations" published in 1917---the entire collection is amazing. I never seem to tire of re-reading this poem, and every time I do, there is a different set of lines which evokes an intense visceral reaction from me while I recognize the truth in those lines, while at the same time experiencing utmost pleasure at the way the unhappy truth is said. Behold:
For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
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