"I did not know death had undone so many."

I actually remember you telling that story MIchael. In fact, during some of the particularly sticky passages of my dissertation chapter on Eliot, I would say to myself: "Well....TS?"

He never answered.

Incidentally, Michael is the person who introduced me to TS Eliot when I was a wee impressionable 14 year old. It's his fault I have inexplicably erotic associations with Prufrock, and also--perhaps because of the times (mid-'70s) or the Marine graveside chat story--that I somehow always vaguely thought that Eliot was a dry-witted antiwar radical. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible to read stuff like "The Hollow Men" that way.

I was vaguely annoyed and offended when I grew up and everybody started telling me what a stuffy, cold, repressed old reactionary Eliot was. And then I was afraid to study him closely, because I was afraid that they were right and I was just reading him wrong and I'd lose that shivering resonance, the sense of toes at the edge of a beautiful abyss, I always got reading "The Waste Land".

Didn't happen. Turns out his poetry _is_ inexplicably erotic. So there.

Anyway, more stories! How did you all get turned on to TSE? Was there a defining moment?

For me it was the line "I think we are in Rat's Alley, where the dead men lost their bones." I dream of telling the story and mapping the geography and architecture of Rat's Alley some day, but it's only lit in sporadic fashion and there are these big moherfucking rats... Then "I grow old, I grow old..." (come on gang, finish the line with me-- Eliot singalong!)
I respect the academic reading of poetry, indeed have to teach it sometimes, but for myself I memorize poetry that I love, walk around with it, recite it after a couple of drinks., greatly upsetting the dignity and repose of the tea party. I've done that with a fair amount of Shakespeare and lots of scraps from others. I'll think of a line I've heard a hundred times before and suddenly "get it" in my bones. Lately it's been "Antony and Cleopatra" rattling around in there (strong medicine for the male menopause), Neruda, Tennyson, a couple of things by Akhmatova.
I'd be doing that anyway, but hearing Robert Bly read a few times legitimatized the practice for me. I had a couple of Russian exchange students last year and both of them seem to have acquired the habit in childhood. Graves says (White Goddess?) that it's a poem if it makes your hair stand up when you think of it while shaving next morning. Poor Graves, I've never had that experience with his poetry (except for short stories like "Kill Them! Kill Them!"), but it's still good advice.
With most of Eliot and with almost all of Yeats' poetry, I get that frisson again and again (yeah, I said it-- I said "frisson", and I'm big enough to kick the ass of any man who tries to stop me!), which must have driven Graves nuts, and probably explains why he mocked Yeats poetic theories ("Have you written any poetry lately, Mr. Yeats?" "No, my wife has been disinclined.")
The clowns who keep trying to tell Shannon that Eliot was repressed, academic etc. are the academic equivalent of people who only know what Time magazine tells them they should know. They repeat what they hear other professors say at parties and that becomes the party line about Eliott's work in the classroom.

I often use this construction as a substitute for "tough sh**." Works best among the college-educated, tho not exclusively, obviously...

Oh, yeah--I've never been a Marine.