Introduction What can a poem actually do when something in life cannot be fixed?That question lies at the center of this second exploration of Love As If You've Never Been Hurt, the anthology edited by Korean poet Ryu Si-hwa.In Part 1, we approached the collection through an imagined conversation about wounds, healing, love, mortality, and the challenge of … [Read more...] about Love As If You’ve Never Been Hurt: 25 Book Club Questions
poetry analysis
The Waste Land Explained: What Did T. S. Eliot Mean?
Introduction What was T. S. Eliot really trying to say in The Waste Land?Nearly a century of interpretation has produced familiar answers: postwar disillusionment, spiritual collapse, sexual alienation, cultural fragmentation, loss of faith, and the breakdown of modern civilization.But Eliot himself complicated those explanations. He resisted reducing the … [Read more...] about The Waste Land Explained: What Did T. S. Eliot Mean?
The Waste Land Characters Explained: Eliot’s Broken World
Introduction What if the best way to understand T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is not to explain its symbols first, but to listen to the people trapped inside them?Published in 1922, The Waste Land is famous for its fragmentation. Voices appear and disappear. Memories collide with the present. A wealthy woman desperately asks someone to speak to her. Lil … [Read more...] about The Waste Land Characters Explained: Eliot’s Broken World