Rough Brush Strokes

One thing that really struck me about The Waste Land was the way Elliot used such bold and sometimes abrasive strokes to paint his pictures. While the words themselves are pretty cryptic, the sensations, feelings, and actions one experiences while reading the poem are quite clear. I'll be quite interested to discuss the poem in class tomorrow, because while being confused, I am also intrigued. After coming out of last semester's poems of Wordsworth and Blake, this writing style is really a shock. The earlier poets seemed to handle their subjects delicately as though they would break easily. I wonder if Elliot's subjection to the chaos of the world at the time caused this sort of handling of his subjects. The world was a much harder place, and even the subjects held dearly were held tightly. Much more tightly than those delicately handled objects of the romantics.