T. S. Eliot

"Between the desire / And the spasm / Between the potency / And the existence / Between the essence / And the descent / Falls the Shadow / For Thine is the Kingdom"
"The Hollow Men" (1925)

Points of Reflection

1. in the book Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-Century Writers (1965), J. Hillis Miller writes that "In 'The Hollow Men' all the richness and complexity of culture which gives [the earlier poem] 'The Waste Land' such thickness of texture disappears." In other words, the poem gives us symbols without clear referents, a series of simple images untied to particular socio-historical elements of western civilization. Take a stab at providing those referents yourself, at filling in the blanks. What elements of human experience might this enigmatic poem be most preoccupied with describing?

2. does this poem's pervasive tone match or move contrary to its message? Answering this will, of course, require you first to wrestle with both the poem's tone and its "message."

"Scarecrows" (2002)
Hugo Xavier Bastidas

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu