Poems
Each poem has five sections. The later poems connect to the earlier sections with Little Gidding synthesizing the themes of the earlier poems within its sections. Within Eliot's own poetry, the five sections connect to The Waste Land. This allowed Eliot to structure his larger poems, which he had difficulty with.
According to C.K. Stead, the structure is based on:
1. The movement of time, in which brief moments of eternity are caught.
2. Worldly experience, leading on to dissatisfaction.
3. Purgation in the world, divesting the soul of the love of created things.
4. A lyric prayer for, or affirmation of the need of, Intercession.
5. The problems of attaining artistic wholeness which becomes analogue for, and merge into, the problems of achieving spiritual health.
These points can be applied to the structure of The Waste Land, though there is not necessarily a fulfillment of these but merely a longing or discussion of them.
Read more about this topic: Four Quartets
Famous quotes containing the word poems:
“There’s a wonderful family called Stein:
There’s Gert and there’s Ep and there’s Ein.
Gert’s poems are bunk,
Ep’s statues are junk,
And no-one can understand Ein.”
—Anonymous.
“Suppertime I float toward you
from the stewpot
holding poems you shrug off
and you kiss me like a mosquito.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue’s wrangle,
the world’s pottage, the rat’s star.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)