Unexpected.

T.S. Eliott's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, really took me by surprise. I mean, REALLY took my by surprise. It is also, to me, a pretty difficult seeming poem.

The title would suggest that it is a love poem, right? And the first two lines:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky

That sounds to me how a love song would begin. That is where it ends, however, as the rest of the poem does not resemble anything lovely at all. It's quite comical, actually, how far from a typical love poem it is.



I am going to create a list of all the things one wouldn't expect to find in a love poem:
patient etherized on a table, one-night cheap hotels, sawdust restaurants, yellow fog, soot that falls from chimneys, murder, bald spot, dying with a dying fall, malingers, a head on a platter, coming back from the dead, drowning.

So, not your typical love poem, but he does have some lines that remind you what you're supposed to be reading.

Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?

I liked how T.S. Eliot addressed the fact that the poem digresses. I mean, it digresses a lot!! With all of the lines in brackets and his asides, he seems to be musing often and getting off topic. It makes this poem hard to follow, but when he says that it must be from the perfume he is smelling, then that somehow makes it okay because it brings it back to the idea that it is a love song. Another example of digression: the talk of his balding head.

[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]

There is a lot of repetition. What does it mean? How does it affect the poem? Well, in some ways it makes sense to me and in other it really doesn't. An example of when it doesn't:

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

In what room? And what women? Why does it matter that they are talking about a famous artist? (or Ninja Turtle? jk) I don't understand why he says this once, let alone twice. But other repetitions make more sense to me:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

So, not only is that such a cool line, the way it sounds AND looks!  But it also has repetition for effect, the effect being a reassuring tone. Don't worry because there will be enough time to get ready (prepare your face) to meet new people. This is J. Alfred speaking to whomever he loves, reassuring them that they have time to get ready and look pretty.
Interestingly, though, it seems that the speaker needs more reassurance than who he is speaking to. "There will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?'" and then turn and run away because no, he doesn't dare. He is too worried that people will be commenting on his hair and his clothes and his chicken legs.

Allusion: Lazarus from the dead. Why does he include this? I really can't say. Biblical allusions in any form of literature are powerful, but this is where Eliot loses me. I have no idea why he talks about coming back from the dead as if he were Lazarus.

To me, it kind of in the most convoluted way seems like the speaker (J. Alfred) is speaking to his love, and he has something important to say but never does? He has "an overwhelming question" perhaps his feelings? Though he gets side-tracked and confusing and then in the end he never asks anyone an overwhelming question, he says that they drown instead, with mermaids.
Very bizarre, but also very interesting.