In this lecture, Professor Hammer considers the psycho-sexual aspects of T.S. Eliot’s, The Waste Land. The landscape of the poem is described and its key figures introduced. Particular emphasis is placed on couples and scenes of dialogue with aspects of romantic or sexual distress. At the lecture’s conclusion, a broad summation of the individual units of the poem is presented, and the editing process, in particular Ezra Pound’s contributions, is reflected upon.  

The early poetry of T.S. Eliot is examined. Differences between Pound and Eliot, in particular the former’s interest in translation versus the latter’s in quotation, are suggested. Eliot’s relationship to tradition is considered in his essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The early poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is read, with emphasis on the poem’s resistance to traditional forms and its complicated depiction of its speaker’s fragmentary consciousness.

The Imagist school is defined, in part through the prose of Ezra Pound. Representative examples of Imagist poetry are examined, particularly Hilda Doolittle’s “Garden,” “Sea Rose,” and “Oread.” Pound’s early poem, “In a Station of the Metro,” and Pound’s comment on the poem’s composition are studied as Imagist statements. His work with foreign languages, particularly Chinese, is considered in relation to Imagism in the poems “Jewel Stairs’ Grievance” and “River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.”

Yeats’s late poetry is discussed and interpreted. The poet’s interest in human knowledge and its relationship to the body, particularly the aging body, is traced from “Leda and the Swan” to “Sailing to Byzantium,” “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz,” “Two Songs from a Play,” and “Vacillation.” Yeats’s late interest in the experiences of joy, madness, and “gaiety” is examined in “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop.” Yeats’s de-mystifying attitude toward art in “The Circus Animals’ Destruction” is contrasted with his celebration of art in “Lapis Lazuli.”

The early poetry of William Butler Yeats is read and interpreted with particular attention paid to Yeats’s ambitions as a specifically Irish poet.  Yeats’s commitment to a poetry of symbol is explored in “The Song of the Wandering Aengus,” a fable of poetic vocation. “A Coat,” composed at the end of Yeats’s struggle to bring about an Irish national theater, shows the poet reconceiving his style and in search of a new audience. ”The Fisherman” is read as a revision of “The Song of the Wandering Aengus” which reflects this new set of concerns.