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You know ear-worms: the line that keeps playing over and over in your mind--from a song or a poem or catch-phrase or something.
For *years* I have had two recurring Eliot ear-worms from "Prufrock":
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
and
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
It's probably an OCD thing or something. But at least if I have to have an obsession, at least it's a highbrow obsession...
For *years* I have had two recurring Eliot ear-worms from "Prufrock":
"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
and
"In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo."
It's probably an OCD thing or something. But at least if I have to have an obsession, at least it's a highbrow obsession...
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Columbus
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Re: Eliot Ear-worms
Thu, February 14, 2008 - 10:07 AMOh damn, excellent topic. My blog entery today is on exactly an irksome Eliot earworm.
"I had not thought death had undone so many."
Or "Looking into the heart of the light, the Silence."
and of course "I've heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
It gets to feeling like some kind of tourettic or OCD thing with me too. I'm constantly spouting Eliot, unless I pay close attention. -
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Re: Eliot Ear-worms--Mermaids
Thu, February 14, 2008 - 11:12 PMI just posted about the mermaids in the May Sarton tribe, which I moderate (for all two of us). For a while I was the publicist for the film adaptation of _Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing_...
tribes.tribe.net/maysarton...c3647a1c87
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Re: Eliot Ear-worms
Thu, February 14, 2008 - 11:23 PMAll three of these lines have five feet to them... I think there's something to pentameter that drills it into the mind...
OTOH, there's Twain's "Punch, Brothers, Punch," which is in tetrameter...
Before the phrase "ear-worm" was ever coined, Twain wrote the abovementioned story to "warn you, reader, if you should come across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid them as you would a pestilence."
But I'm willing to make an exception for Eliot now and then.
(BTW, if you haven't already, read "Punch, Brothers, Punch" at your own peril--I still remember the whole damn thing after reading it in the 8th grade, and my 30th high-school reunion is coming up.)
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