[my thanks to Rachel, for our recent discussion]
Old Possum: I was, then, a callow botcher
of my own verses, written callowly,
much too enamored of a century
(the seventeenth---such troubled history).
But then, I read The Waste Land, your great Poem
of spiritual despair and misery
(appropriate to my college venue
that Autumn, where I felt small and undone---
far from my Beloved, Cerulean).
Reading, I felt that my crude adolescent
lines were too shallow and too evanescent.
On campus at that time, I was not called Starwatcher.
Then, for the Christmas Break, I returned home,
full of all that I had just learned from you.
Starward
[*/+/^] [S74rw4rd]
Author's Notes/Comments:
Although The Waste Land was published in two different magazines (British and American, respectively; in October and November of 1922, respectively), those publications did not include the notes, which are an integral part of the poem as it is read today. That version, in book form, was published in December of 1922, so this poem of mine anticipates the anniversary.
My first term at college began on September 9th, 1976; a fairly miserable period, from which I returned home on November 23rd, 1976 for the long Christmas Break that would last through January 1, 1977. Being apart from my Beloved, Cerulean, was traumatic; but I found certain enabling compensations, including the recommendation (from the Literature Professor who became a trusted advisor throughout my four collegiate years) to abandon my Miltonic studies and to read (for the first time) T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, which my literature professor described to me as a "nightmare turned inside out and upside down." I began to read Eliot's poems voraciously---not out of compulsion as in a classroom assignment, but out of sheer admiration for the elegance and beauty (and even the wry humor) of his verses. Two years later, during the Autumn term of my Junior collegiate year, I was admitted to the Eliot Seminar---a class offered only once every three years, and admission was by approved invitation only.
I thank the Lord for the blessing of having lived into the year of the hundredth anniversary of The Waste Land.
I am grateful to one of postpoems' fine Poets, Rachel, for the discussions that led me to write this poem.
