Kay Clarity
You see, the poet haunts, casting a spell on the reader or listener. The power of the word in poetic form is nearly incomprehensible. Especially when paired with melody, the effect is extraordinary. This means that a songwriter, a hundred years down the road, having read only small, peripheral portions of his poetry, and having understood even less, can attempt to write a song in meaningful conversation with the poet.

In spite of an education with a focus on both good and great books, I was, appallingly, not familiar with T.S. Eliot until the age of twenty-six, when a short-lived love interest recommended I obtain a collection of his works. In Portland’s famous Powell’s City of Books, while on my last youthful road trip hurrah, I did just that. I have now long relished, far past the ashes that came of that dollar-store candle of a fire, that it accompanied me on a cross-Canada tour in a summer into fall, and now quaintly sits among the hardcover riff-raff that is my used book collection.
But while I did read some full sections of it (parts of it on a ferry from Cape Breton to Newfoundland), I do not know much of T.S. Eliot—not the man, nor his works. I know he was deeply sad, I know he had a religious conversion, and I know that many, many say he is a “great”… and that I feel the same.
My own familiarity is cursory at best, and pretentious at worst—as is the morbid pattern of the modern young “intellectual.”
But this proves rather than disproves the power of the poet, as I am about to argue. I do not humiliate myself for nothing!
You see, the poet haunts. He casts a spell on the reader or listener, as Dana Gioia has frequently and wisely articulated,  » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/01/power-poet-conversation-ts-eliot-burning-world-kay-clarity.html