How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching? — Tom Storm

I was looking at my previous response to your question:

For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard. — T Clark

I'm afraid I somehow gave the impression I have some deep insight into the Tao Te Ching. I don't believe that at all. Lao Tzu was clear that knowledge was not the way to follow the Tao. Maybe that's why I like Taoism so much - it's a lazy man's philosophy. I doubt many would agree with that.

So whatever I said about the translation above wasn't actually meant to denigrate the translation. — Dawnstorm

I've reread what you wrote about your translation. I don't think I expressed my enthusiasm enough in my first response. I would love to hear any more you have to offer if we have any more German poems.

I liked what you wrote and it rings true. Thanks.

Maybe that's why I like Taoism so much - it's a lazy man's philosophy. I doubt many would agree with that. — T Clark

There's an imaginative poetic subtlety involved in Taoism that can't be readily described - hence the The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao I think that's what you've been getting at.

There's an imaginative poetic subtlety involved in Taoism that can't be readily described - hence the The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao I think that's what you've been getting at. — Tom Storm

It's true that I tend to talk about the Tao Te Ching with the same kind of language I do about poetry. I think that's why Lao Tzu's poetic language works so well. For me, both poetry and the Tao Te Ching are about the experience.

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic. . . — Jamal

As @Amity already said, but just in case anyone else is holding back out of a sense of topicality, the more poems and interpretations of poems the better.



Ahhh!

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after.

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after. — Moliere

I took one year of German more than 50 years ago. Back in 2014, my brother and I went to Europe and I refreshed my memory so I could use it when we went over. I love the language. I feel at home in it, even though I am very far from fluent. The gutturals just feel right in the back of my throat, like a mildly bitter IPA.

This is quoted text I've posted before. It's from R.G. Collingwood's "The Principles of Art." I have an affinity for Collingwood's way of seeing things. His writing says things I've been thinking better than I can say them myself.

What is meant by saying that the painter ‘records’ in his picture the experience which he had in painting it? With this question we come to the subject of the audience, for the audience consists of anybody and everybody to whom such records are significant.

It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectator’s does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well.

The issue is that this is based upon personal perspectives and choices about language, intent, mood, culture. Translators do not always agree on how things should be reconstructed and all they can point to is our personal preferences and justification. — Tom Storm

I'm enough of a relativist (intuitively) to feel this keenly, and I'm also aware of different philosophies in translation. A big topic is "How much culural localisation?" The idea behind localisation is that if you're unfamiliar with the source culture, you'll not have the same experience as a native speaker. So someone versed in both, creates a similar experience for such readers via localisation. And that could be "getting closer to the poem" (a phrasing I used). However, you also accept differences and avoid... contact. That which is untranslatable disappears without a trace. If you use less localisation, there's a certain strangeness to the poem that isn't there for the native speaker; but there's an opportunity to learn, because your ignorance isn't glossed over. Very few translators keep to extremes, but the debate is often "how much localisation".

So, yeah, definitely. Whatever path you take, whatever words you choose: preference is inevitable. There's no neutral ground, for example, on the localisation line. Maybe a little more? Maybe a little less?
At some point you just fix the text and move on, or there's nothing at all to read.

Ahhh!

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. — Moliere

Glad to hear this. I often feel like I'm rambling on and say nothing much at all.

This thread is excellent. The different perspectives and preferences. The conversation about translation. I'm listening and learning, thanks to all.

I think @T Clark mentioned another poetry discussion with a different slant. I'd forgotten about it but searched there for a memorable poem posted by @tim wood':

Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, e. e. cummings. These three worth the dime obtaining complete collections of their poetry, usually in one volume, for long-term browsing. And worth a quick look at reviews of collections.
[...]
Another poem of his I like, for a certain visceral vividness, that's longer, is Home Burial, here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial — tim wood

[Unfortunately, tim seems to have taken a lengthy break...for whatever reason. Hope all is well.]

Many other fantastic and helpful contributions and connections made. Worth a read,

Leaves fall
Leaves pile up;
Rain ... beats on rain. — Gyōdai

@tim wood introduced me to a whole lot of new things - always grateful for the sparks :sparkle:

For example: this book:

From: 'Creating Poetry' - John Drury
Ch XI - Other Arts, Other Influences, p184

Poems can imitate musical forms.
Michael Harper uses jazz as both inspiration and subject matter in poems such as 'Dear John, Dear Coltrane' and 'A Love Supreme' ( title of Coltrane's four movement masterpiece).
— Drury

The music:
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme [Full Album] (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU — Amity

Thanks for:

Leaves fall
Leaves pile up;
Rain ... beats on rain. — Gyōdai

***

Simply sums up the spirit of Autumn.
I searched and guess where I found it?...
(worth repeating)

Some 'Mad Fool' responding to @javi2541997
Yet another thread: Philosophical Poems! Thanks again to @T Clark.

The only Haiku poetry I can remember from my youth is,

Leaves fall
And pile up;
Rain beats on rain.
— Gyōdai

There was a connection there between the poem, the poet, and me but it's lost now. Too bad, I wish I could go back about 30 years ago and re-read the poem and re-experience those emotions again.

Numinous,
Back then it was,
Now,
Like a spent candle,
Nothing! — Mad Fool Agent Smith

Love it :fire:

'Poem Meaning' started by @Moliere :fire:
Poems mean a lot. To some. Others are open to persuasion. Perhaps even to inspiration...

:) Thanks! -- I'm not done with it yet, either. I just get to things when I get to them....

I just get to things when I get to them.... — Moliere

Good thinking. It can be overwhelming.

This thread is excellent. — Amity

Yes. Thanks to @Moliere for starting it.

tim seems to have taken a lengthy break...for whatever reason. — Amity

Tim told me he is bowing out of the forum. There's always a chance he will rejoin us.

I'd forgotten about it but searched there for a memorable poem posted by tim wood': — Amity

Another poem of his I like, for a certain visceral vividness, that's longer, is Home Burial, here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial — tim wood

I just reread "Home Burial." It had been a long time. I love the way Frost writes about men and women. I think of "West Running Brook" and "The Death of the Hired Hand." I don't know anyone who does it better.

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic--I recently read the "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes. It's a poem about writing poems, or about creativity, and foxes:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed. — Jamal

I like poems with vivid visual imagery, and this one certainly has that. I also really like foxes. We had a pair in our back yard. They kept the groundhogs away and their kits rolled and play-fought back by our garden.

I also like the poets self-awareness about his writing process. Watching his ideas sneaking closer and closer. It's a different way of thinking than mine. Especially now that I'm retired I can wait for inspiration. I don't have to work to coax my words out into the open.

I've always liked "The Song of Hiawatha" by Wordsworth. A link:

https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288

The poem is capital "R" Romantic - it tells the legend of a hero in the golden age of his People - and small "r" romantic - it tells the story of the love between a man and a woman. The meter is trochaic tetrameter - four metric feet of two syllables with emphasis on the first.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

It's a very long poem and I guess that sing-songy rhythm could be tiresome to some, but I like the way it pushes the story along and draws me into the poem. My favorite section is the verse "Picture Writing" about how Hiawatha invented writing.

"Face to face we speak together,
But we cannot speak when absent,
Cannot send our voices from us
To the friends that dwell afar off;
Cannot send a secret message,
But the bearer learns our secret,
May pervert it, may betray it,
May reveal it unto others."
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.
From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.

My favorite part of this verse:

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.
First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, "My painting
Makes me powerful over others."
Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, "Listen!
'T is my voice you hear, my singing!"
Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
"I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!"
Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, "I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!"
Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, "Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me!"
Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, "Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you!"
And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle;
And the image had this meaning:
"Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper!

Too carried away with poetry, I realised I hadn't paid attention to the OP:

I chose Brian Bilston because he's contemporary, accessible, and writes in a style that is easily recognizable as poetry.

Philosophically speaking I want to contrast this with truth-conditions as a means for bringing out what else there is in meaning, especially in discussing meaning. — Moliere

I found this very long article about 'Poetry and Truth' while looking for Goethe and his poetry.
It reminds me of a previous discussion where I highlighted the use of poetry as communicating first-hand War experience, when some truths were blocked from the public.

I didn't see it as a 'moral' dimension as described below, but yes, something to consider:

Poets, like journalists, historians, are after the truth. But what kind of truth, exactly, do we find in poetry?
[..]
The tension between poetry and truth gave Goethe the title of his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (“From My Life: Poetry and Truth”), written between 1811 and 1833. W. H. Auden borrowed Goethe’s title in 1959 for a prose sequence on love, and, in 1977, the poet Anthony Hecht (a great admirer of both poets) took the same title for a poem in which he considers, among other things, Goethe, the Second World War, and the thorny relationship between truth and art. Hecht conveyed the truth of his war experience as a poet not as a journalist or historian. [*]
[...]
When Goethe takes “Poetry and Truth” as the title of his autobiography, what he is suggesting in part, I think, is that experience, in a work of art, may be rendered most clearly, and in a sense most truthfully, by attending to something beyond the verifiable facts. Fine, you might say, but doesn’t art, then, become, as Jacques Maritain wrote, “a world apart, closed, limited, absolute”—not the apprehension of reality but a replacement for reality, an illusion? This was a mote to trouble the mind’s eye of Plato.
[...]
For Winters, poetry—and, in its concision, lyric poetry, especially—is the highest linguistic form because, taken together, connotation and denotation compose the “total content” of language. It’s true that the two exist together in other kinds of writing, a novel, say, but poetry, by dint of its meters, lines, and highly wrought rhythms, modulates feeling with the greatest control.
Connotation in poetry, then, acquires what Winters thinks of as a “moral” dimension. In order to render human experience truthfully, connotation or “feeling” must be precisely managed:

The artistic process is one of moral evaluation of human experience, by means of a technique which renders possible an evaluation more precise than any other. The poet tries to understand his experience in rational terms, to state his understanding, and simultaneously to state, by means of the feelings we attach to words, the kind and degree of emotion that should properly be motivated by this understanding.
The term “moral,” then, refers—at least in this instance—to a fairly technical process of selecting the best words in the best order for a given subject. “In so far as the rational statement is understandable and acceptable, and in so far as the feeling is properly motivated by the rational statement, the poem will be good,” he tells us. — Poetry and Truth by David Jezzi - The New Criterion

[emphasis added]

--------

[*] Hecht. A snippet from later in the article:

This challenge creates the underlying tension in Hecht’s most famous poem of the Holocaust, which takes its title from Goethe’s dying words, “More Light! More Light!”:

We move now to outside a German wood.
Three men are there commanded to dig a hole
In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down
And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole.

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared. But he did refuse.
A Luger settled back deeply in its glove.
He was ordered to change places with the Jews.

Much casual death had drained away their souls.
The thick dirt mounted toward the quivering chin.
When only the head was exposed the order came
To dig him out again and to get back in.

No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.
When he finished a riding boot packed down the earth.
The Luger hovered lightly in its glove.
He was shot in the belly and in three hours bled to death.

No prayers or incense rose up in those hours
Which grew to be years, and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

Hecht did not witness this scene at Buchenwald—it was not true for him in this sense—but takes it from a book by the historian and survivor Eugen Kogon. Even so, the scene resonates very directly with his own life. Hecht’s infantry company was present at the liberation of Flossenbürg at end of the war. As he later explained in an interview, Flossenbürg... — Poetry and Truth

It reminds me of a previous discussion where I highlighted the use of poetry as communicating first-hand War experience, when some truths were blocked from the public. — Amity

It makes me wonder about any poems coming out of current conflicts, like Ukraine.
Or even Russia, or other places where the truth might be censored @Jamal, anyone?
Perhaps too soon for that...too busy experiencing the raw first-hand...

From: https://lithub.com/february-get-the-ink-and-weep-contemporary-poetry-from-ukraine/

Three Poems by Iya Kiva, Translated by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk

Although she has increasingly shifted toward writing in Ukrainian, her poems are rich with references to Russian literature (in one poem below she cites Pasternak’s 1912 line, “February. Get the ink and weep.”) Kiva’s war poems describe a young country desperately clutching life.

–Amelia Glaser, Cambridge, MA
This is the first in a series featuring contemporary poetry from Ukraine.

*

Three poems by Iya Kiva (b. 1984)

This coffin’s for you, little boy, don’t be afraid, lie down,
A bullet called life clutched tight in your fist,

We didn’t believe in death, look – the crosses are tinfoil.
Do you hear – all the bell towers tore out their tongues?

We won’t forget you, believe it, believe it, be …
Belief bleeds down the seam inside your sleeve,

Chants, prayers, psalms swell up in a lump in your throat
In the middle of this damned winter all dressed in khaki,

And February, getting the ink, is sobbing.
And the candle drips on the table, burning and burning…

Translated from the Russian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2014

*

and when it came my turn to be killed
everyone started to speak Lithuanian
everyone started to call me Yanukas
summoned me hither to their native land

my god I said I am not Lithuanian
my god I told them I said it in Yiddish
my god I told them I said it in Russian
my god I said to them in Ukrainian

there where the Kalmius flows into the Neman
a child is crying in a church

Translated from the Russian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2016

*

to hold a needle of silence in your mouth
to stitch your words in white thread
to whimper while drowning in spit
to keep from screaming spitting blood
to hold the water of a language on your tongue
which leaks like a rusty bucket
to mend things that are still useful
to sew crosses on the really weak spots
like bandages on the wounded in a hospital
to learn to search for the roots of a life
that has yet to learn its name

Translated from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2019

____________________________

Iya Kiva is a poet, translator, and journalist living in Kyiv, Ukraine. She is the author of two volumes of poetry, Further from Heaven (Podal’she ot raya, 2018) and The First Page of Winter (Persha storinka zimy, 2019), and the recipient of numerous awards for her poetry and translation.

Amelia Glaser is Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at U.C. San Diego. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands (2012) and Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine (2020).

Yuliya Ilchuk is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. She is the author of Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity (2021).

More from Ukraine.
Interesting translation notes re phonetic associaton. Also, a new understanding of identity:

Kiyanovska has recently written ekphrastic poems based on Khrystyna Valko’s digital graphic poster art. One poem accompanies a portrait of a heart, trapped in a brick wall, an homage to Mariupol:

серце впіймане в біль виною
сто п’ятнадцятий день війни
між душею і чужиною
маріупольські бур’яни
з-під асфальту попроростали

the heart trapped in guilt-pain
war’s hundred fifteenth day
between soul and stranger
Mariupol’s weeds
sprouted from the asphalt

This Mariupol is a violated, animate being. It is a body with blood, tears, and veins, dismembered and profaned by the atrocities of war. These lines open with the phonetic association between “guilt” (vyna) and “war” (viina). The string of painful images, lacking any punctuation, approximates the emotional pace of perceiving the city’s unfathomable losses. Another recent poem accompanies Valko’s poster to encourage blood donation. Kiyanovska reduces language to its simplest connections, using the verbal associations of blood and love to redraw the meaning of a Ukrainian community, one connected through the act of giving blood: “‘donor’ can translate to ‘love’”.

The “multilevel I” that Kiyanovska attempted to articulate with her Babyn Yar cycle in 2017 has become a way of understanding kinship among linguistically, geographically, and ethnically diverse Ukrainians in a time of war. Kiyanovska’s ongoing poetics describes a radically new understanding of identity: today, she asserts, Ukrainians should not be bound by ethnic blood-lines, but rather (tragically, heroically) by spilled blood. This is part ten in a series on contemporary poetry from Ukraine.

[...]

the heart trapped in guilt-pain
war’s hundred fifteenth day
between soul and stranger
Mariupol’s weeds
sprouted from the asphalt
hung from the veins
“Azovstal” dead suburbs up
to the horizon oxygen
in crematoria just-baked
blackened teeth and fingers
dead human – and stork-nests
the silence of a sharp shrill sound
shatters the walls today
the walls are writhing blood flows
from acacia blossoms
rising like a mustering of storks
a homeless windowpane broken
infinite black holes
they wanted to live in this city
and of course to love
and now there’s only air water
salty from the tears
no freedom in these ruins
just the carcasses of suitcases

(2022)

— "

Throughout the Spring of 2022, Kiyanovska has posted poems to her facebook page about those regions most affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion. Here too Kiyanovska highlights the collectivity of a “multilevel I.” One poem assumes a child’s voice to describe a missile strike in lines that are all the more brutal for their childish rhyme scheme and rhythm:

it’s our very last moment of silence
we’ve already had four
Three times since this morning: sirens
we all ran out the door
we knew Tanya’d run ahead
but the bomb buried everyone
Tanya, missing a leg, lies dead
still in kindergarten

це наша остання хвилина мовчання
до того було чотири
сирени вмикалися тричі з рання
ми вийшли всі із квартири
а таня ми знали побігла перша
та бомба усіх накрила
таня лежить без ноги і вмерша
вона ще в дитсад ходила

OK. That's enough I think. Kinda makes Brian Bilston's 'Serenity Prayer' look small...

mine-sweeping [*]

we fall and rise
in foreign fields
sown and planted
with blood, sweat and tears. Boom.

meaningless mines metred
lie still unexplored
til the sign, the sound
of pop, high tones groan. Bang!

what do we find
as we plough the fields
and scatter the good
hoarded coins, discarded cans. Bank.

life near dead, decomposing
from hunger and greed
pathways stolen
seeds stamped not growing. Blank.

demining the demeaning
we dig for victory
what fellow-kind do we find
in the rise and fall of foreign fields...

Just "Grow your own veg, Frank!"

--------

[*]

The deminers, part of the 113th Kharkiv Defense Brigade of Ukraine’s territorial defense forces, walked deep into fallow agricultural lands on Thursday along a muddy road between fields of dead sunflowers overgrown with high weeds. [...]
“One year of war equals 10 years of demining,” Dokuchaev said. “Even now we are still finding munitions from World War II, and in this war they’re being planted left and right.” — Guardian

What do you feel now when you read that poem?
Would you really want to re-experience the original moment in time?
Or can you see it both from the past and in the present as something special?

I ask because I think I was a bit insensitive when I said I loved your poem in response.
The negative feelings compared to the positive connection...isn't what I loved, just the way you expressed yourself.

...there was a connection there between the poem, the poet, and me but it's lost now. Too bad, I wish I could go back about 30 years ago and re-read the poem and re-experience those emotions again.

Numinous,
Back then it was,
Now,
Like a spent candle,
Nothing!
— Mad Fool/Agent Smith — Amity

:snicker:

I've lost touch with my poetic side it seems. :sad:

I've lost touch with my poetic side it seems. — Agent Smith

No nay, nivver! You can play the wild rover for many a year...or drama queen, whatever...

Your profile shows some good quotes:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
— Philip K. Dick

John Stewart wrote "Daydream Believer" as the third in a trilogy of songs about suburban life,[3] recalling: "I remember going to bed thinking, 'What a wasted day — all I’ve done is daydream.' And from there I wrote the whole song. I never thought it was one of my best songs. Not at all".[4]

If you can't sing, then lip-synch :wink:

Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the bluebird as she sings
The six o'clock alarm would never ring
But it rings, and I rise
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes
My shavin' razor's cold and it stings

Cheer up, sleepy Jean
Oh, what can it mean
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen?

You once thought of me
As a white knight on his steed
Now, you know how happy I can be
Oh, and our good times start and end
Without dollar one to spend
But how much, baby, do we really need

While browsing for poems -- I have never before ventured down the path of The Wasteland until now. And I really did love it. I read an essay beforehand, knowing that the poem is notoriously difficult, and she suggested to sit at home with the sound of the poem rather than starting out with the analytic approach of trying to understand all the references, or even all the images! I can feel the cohesive mood in the poem, but the ending mystifies me.

However, one technique Elliot uses I want to highlight in this thread, because it's a good example of poetic meaning - and it's from the first lines of the first stanza! :D

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Here the line-breaks give the lines a double meaning, a really common poetic technique. Whereas truth-condition type meaning attempts to set out a meaning, poetic meaning frequently attempts to employ multiple meanings to give a kind of resonance or mood or theme, or to compare ideas and moods and feelings at the same time with the exact same set of words as they are spoken or read.

So as I read it the first line "April is the cruellest month, breeding" -- clearly "breeding" forms a phrase with "Lilicas out of the dead land", but also April itself is breeding (what is it breeding? Well, the rest of the poem fills that out, somewhat, but only through images and sounds and feelings)

Having added some modern poetry to our list of poems, I automatically feel the need to invoke something classical -- so browsing Shakespeare's sonnets I decided upon --

108

What’s in the brain that ink may character
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What’s new to speak, what now to register,
That may express my love or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o’er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
So that eternal love in love’s fresh case
Weighs not the dust and injury of age,
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,
But makes antiquity for aye his page,
Finding the first conceit of love there bred,
Where time and outward form would show it dead.

In Elliot we get something personal, something purposefully undefined -- but a definite mood, I'd say. The essay I read wanted me to read The Wasteland like it would change me, even -- like it was a spiritual experience. With Shakespeare we get a classic form, well executed, on a classic subject -- love and aging. Something familiar re-addressed, re-spoken, and re-assessed.

One of the parts of the sonnet that is like The Psalms is the relationship between the first and second stanza -- it can be put to multiple uses, but usually the 2nd stanza either repeats the first stanza, or it states something which develops the first stanza, or it states something which is in some kind of opposition or contrasting stance to the first stanza. The Psalms use this method to develop meaning -- repetition, development, or opposition.

Something that's different about the sonnet is the couplet which puts a bow on it -- though sometimes that's put to the opposite effect too.

While browsing for poems -- I have never before ventured down the path of The Wasteland until now. And I really did love it. — Moliere

Oh, geez. Now you're going to make me read "The Wasteland." It may take me a while. I did have an experience perhaps similar to the one you describe at the beginning of your post. I remember reading and hating Elliot in high school, in particular "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." About six months ago I decided to take another look and I was surprised to find I really enjoyed it. I'll try to keep that in mind as I read "The Wasteland."