During class the past few times I have struggled to get back into a routine and to re-focus my mind on analytical reading. With Yeats I found this especially challenging because I had to reread many portions just to understand what he was trying to get at. The thing that is difficult for me about poetry is getting to the root of what we are really supposed to glean from the poet, digging through the figurative language, the rhyme and meter to find real meaning. What I lack is a fundamental desire to break poetry into smaller parts and dissect meaning because I am typically too preoccupied with the outer beauty of poetry. One line in particular from the Elliot piece stood out to me purely because of it's thought-provoking imagery.
"I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones."
Take from it what you will I loved these lines because I think it is a beautifully written metaphor about the state of man and depravity.

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