T.S. Eliot

I've been on a re-reading the classics kick, especially works that I read in high school and probably never fully appreciated at the time.

Last night I visited bartleby.com to read T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land.

Prufrock's themes of indecision, loneliness, inadequacy, and pessimism and The Waste Land's themes of death and despair are as haunting as ever.

We read a lot of T. S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888–1965, American-British poet and critic) in several different high school English classes, including the two I re-read last night and The Cocktail Party.

Since I'm a huge dork, I still have copies of nearly all my old papers and discussion essays about these poems from high school and reading these old documents made me laugh out loud.

In some ways, I'm glad to know that I'm now a better writer and thinker than I was then. And yet, my writing style has not changed dramatically. I still quote excessively. I still use far too many words when just one will do.

Makes me think of that saying, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."