the pospinator said:
lol, soulsearcher, u got to get off the fence and take a side, plz tell me ur view, cos i want to noe
come on....is poetry, and more specifically eliot stupid or not???
by sitting back, ur acting like a hollow man....lol
It's a bit hypocritical of you after bagging out T.S. Eliot to use one of his ideas and accuse me of being a hollow man.
IMO, poetry is just another form of expression of the human experience. Poets choose what they write, what they allude to, what they want to portray to their audience, through their words and style of writing. There is no sole purpose of poetry; indeed, poetry could be written to express the poet's feelings and emotions, to communicate a message, to tell a story, to entertain etc. but we cannot conclude that the only purpose of any text is to give a message to the audience; rather that we can infer messages from texts.
The meaning of poetry can never be set in stone, there will never be one definite interpretation of any poem, because as individuals, we have our different contexts, our different views on human existence, our differences will be too great to ever agree on one set meaning of the poem. Although the intentions of the author will affect our interpretations of the poem in question, there can be no denying that inevitably we will never be able to agree on a single interpretation of the poem.
As for a message, would you rather be told flat out that unless you have a purpose in life and commit your will towards that purpose, you are condemned as a hollow man, or rather infer that message from the many deep allusions and style and diction of the poem? This message would be more poignant to you if you were able to reach the message for yourself, whereas trying to force your beliefs down people's throats will not be accepted by many. That was what Eliot tried to achieve, through his allusions and writing style. This is where the purpose of this poem lies, and rather than bagging him out for making it too hard to understand, think of why he wrote the poem this way, leaving it up to your own interpretation, because he wanted his audience to make the get the ideas out for themselves, thus giving more power to his message.
Please feel free to destroy this post in whatever ways you can think of