"I grow old..."

This week, I covered several poems of T. S. Eliot in my classes. I really like Eliot, but it's tough to teach his poetry to undergrads. If a poet is (in part) trying to capture the impossibility of stable meaning in modern society, then his or her poetry must also lack stable meaning. Convincing students that confusion can be thematic (that is, part of the point) is tough; most readers (understandably) find confusion frustrating.

The title of this blog entry is a quote from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." That poem is gaining meaning for me, now that I am (presumably) Prufrock's age. I don't think that I am as pathetically indecisive as he is, nor do I have a "a bald spot in the middle of my hair." Still, the poem speaks to my situation more than it ever did before. Sigh.