“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley	115
Where the dead men lost their bones.

After our discussion in class about understanding poetry and what makes poetry good, it got me thinking. What is it about poetry that speaks to me? Why do I love T.S. Eliot's poems so much? And what is it about the section above that resonates so deeply within me?

I'm not exactly sure that I could give someone bullet points explaining what this section means. Even if I were able to, I could not do it with any great confidence that I was right. Does this mean that the ambiguity of this poem should render it meaningless? Not necessarily.

The dialogue in the lines above seem vaguely familiar, as if I had said them before myself. The lines that follow are haunting, packed with such meaning and horror. It seems like a graphic allusion to war, and I almost get the feeling that I am in a trench in the aftermath of WWI.

Now perhaps that's not what T.S. Eliot was trying to convey, but the raw language gives me that image. I think it's very true that if a poem is any good, it doesn't need a bunch of foot notes.

Commented on Tori's.