I'm not a big fan of poetry and I only read the bulk of poetry during my university days (when I had to for school) but I usually find myself returning to T.S. Eliot's works, especially 'Preludes' every now and then. I find the imagery beautiful and arresting, yet aptly describes the fragmentation and isolation of modern life:
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Another favourite T.S. Eliot is 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'; how can you not sympathise with the middle-aged suitor who does not 'dare to eat a peach'? He reminds me of the butler in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, another reticient suitor.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
There's just something extremely elegant in how all the words are strung together in his poetry that makes me want to read them time after time, even though I feel that I'm not understanding all of it. Maybe that's the appeal. To me, his poems are made up of fragmented beautiful images that describe a mood, a feeling of restlessness and spiritual decay that can be used to describe the society at large yet identifiable to the reader's own desolation.
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