the love song of j. alfred prufrock

i absolutely ADOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE this poem by t.s. eliot. i don’t think i’ve ever liked a poem like this before.

here’s one of my favourite stanzas of this poem:
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

i love the repetition of “time.” it seems like prufrock is justifying how he doesn’t need to seize the day (carpe diem), how he has “the time” to go abouts without taking action. his inability to take action, make decisions and his constant contemplation reminds me of myself, but obvioiusly, he is to the extreme of this obsession.

never once does he actually make this “the love song” as expected of his readers. he is so afraid to go through with it and expose himself. what he does expose, however, is this self-conflicting angst of this mask: what he wants people to see, and what he tries to conceal. like he said: to prepare a face to meet the faces that you will meet. everyone puts on a mask…

i also love the part where he talks about “a pair of ragged claws/ scuttling across the floors of silent seas…” is that synedoche? or a metonym? anyway, obviously he’s using the device to represent a crab. and what do we know of crabs? they can only shuffle sideways, and they cannot move forward.

–

i just love this poem. so i decided to share my life with liss on the bus today. i whipped out my poem and i started analyzing it with her. and then after i would finish my point this man standing on the bus would nod his head confirming all my thoughts. then after a little while, we had a tiny dicussion about the poem and he helped explain some latin/ greek that i dindt understand.

turns out he’s a professor at ubc and he’s planning to treach prufrock to his arts one class in the spring semester.

now im going to be a tad more cautious when i analyze a timeless poem, such as prufrock.

but isnt this amazing? it’s like poetry bonding people– strangers on the bus!

that’s all for now!

 

i refuse to go with the flow

what is “the flow?”
it knows not between right and wrong;
it cannot sing, dance or laugh;
it has no emotions and cannot express feelings;
it has no mind and cannot think on its own.

most importantly,
the flow goes wherever it wants;
the flow has no direction,
whether to go left or right, or stay straight ahead.

and the flow, most definitely
has no destination.

if i go with the flow, where will it lead me?
towards an on-going fatal flood
that will soon defeat me.

if i go with the flow, will it resolve things?
it knows not when to stop,
the ripples turn into rifts that cease not to mend things;
because the flow knows not.

why should i trust the flow?
how do i trust a mindless, directionless, destinationless, knowingless
abstraction?

i refuse to go with the flow.

 -A. Jung

 

i like this weather

i like this weather
it’s nice
the shadowy clouds block away
the sun

because only guess what?
the sun
gives me freckles
damn freckles

dark, heavy clouds means
rain
i like the rain
it’s a fashion show

it shows my fashion-able
rainboots
splashing, splashing
in tiny puddles

’cause i dont like the mud
mud:
another word for rain
and dirt

i like this weather
it’s nice
but let’s be careful and put on
sunscreen