I love both Yeats and Eliot, but I think Eliot just a little more. I had to write a paper on Buddhist influences in the Waste Land and found a really fascinating myth/story that seemed to relate to the "dog that's friend to men."
The story, short version, is that Buddha visited a rich man. The rich man laid out a feast, but his people were starving. A demon in the shape of a dog or wolf dug up the bones of the poor people he was supposed to be governing and howled, to inform the Buddha of the evil the rich man did.
I can't stand Yeats for some reason, I've just never "got" him despite having to teach him loads of times. Eliot is good but I like Wallace Stevens better than any of that lot. (I seem to prefer American poets for some reason. I'm not sure why; I certainly don't prefer American novelists. Anyway, Eliot gets marks for being born there.)
Angus! Come stand over here next to me with the rest of the Yeats haters! (We did him for A-Level and I loved his stuff at first, but all that calculating self-mythologising really got to me after a bit).
ee cummings is my hero
She sang beyond the genius of the sea...
Wallace Stevens is one of my favorites too.
Angus! Haven't seen you in AGES!
I love Yeats and Eliot, but Eliot a bit more, I think.
Doesn't the Mermaids singing bit come from John Donne:
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear the mermaids
singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock there's one stanza that goes:
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
It's my understanding that the mermaids are supposed to sing to passersby, to sailors, but they sing to one another, not to him.
Oh-- I was unclear-- i though Eliot was riffing off the Donne, and all the "mermaid singing" book titles were riffing off the Eliot.
