Lending Library: Thoughts

I'm not sure where I'm giong to go yet with this Lending Library project. I'll need to think about it more over the next week. However, here's what I have so far:

My authors are William Carlos Williams and T.S Eliot.
William Carlos Williams has a funny name. "William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician"; but during his long lifetime, Williams excelled at both. Two days after his death, a British publisher announced that he was going to print his poems. During his lifetime, Williams had not received as much recognition from Britain as he had from the United States, and Williams had always protested against the English influence on American poetry. Modern liberals portray Williams as aligned with liberal democratic issues; however, as his publications in more politically radical journals^[9] like New Masses suggest, his political commitments were further to the left than the term "liberal" indicates. He considered himself a socialist and opponent of capitalism." (Wikipedia)

T.S Eliot I have heard of before. "Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.^[3] Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39. For a poet of his stature, Eliot produced a relatively small amount of poetry and he was aware of this early in his career. He wrote to J. H. Woods, one of his former Harvard professors, "My reputation in London is built upon one small volume of verse, and is kept up by printing two or three more poems in a year. The only thing that matters is that these should be perfect in their kind, so that each should be an event."^[27]Eliot said of his nationality and its role in his work: "[M]y poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England ... It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good ... if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America." (Wikipedia).

Pastoral could be about confusion in regards to religion, or simplicity versus difficulty. Landscape With the fall of Icarus could be about unobservances, or being too caught up with goals or jobs to notice much else. The Great Figure could be about emergency or urgency, or a bad night. The is Just to Say could be about apologies or vengence. Winter Trees could be about hibernation, or comings and goings. Williams has a style that involves a lot of imagery and subtlety. Not much is spelt out for the reader besides for events happening within the poem. Readers are encouraged to think outside the box, which could either be a good or bad thing in regards to students.

From the Waste Land could be about a woman having a baby. Some questions I asked about it are:
Why are Lil's teeth gone?
Is being in the army and not having a good time once you got out an excuse to be rude?
Is Albert willing to cheat on Lil?
Why is "antique" underlined?
Why does Lil look so old? What pills?
"Died of young George" Is George her kid, the name of a pill? Is she on birth control? Is it working?
"What you get married for if you don't want children?" Social question. Should people only marry to have kids? What about love?
Is a "hot gammon" a food?
Repetitive good nights. Murder? Suicide? Going to bed? Miscarriages?
Why is the last line underlined?
Why is 172 there and underlined, or is it just a page number?
This poem raised a lot of questions for me, which could lead to a lot of discussion with students. However, students might be thrown off because of the style of the poem. It's difficult to read and understand what's going on, which wouldn't help students become interested with it.


The only writing assignments I can think of thus far would be to mimic the styles of either T.S Eliot or Williams within a poem, but that seems very usual and expected. I'll have to do more thinking to come up with something better. Maybe a way to relate the two authors together.