"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot

 

                                                    T.S. Eliot by Patrick Heron

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

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.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Copyright Credit: T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot.  Copyright © 1963 by T. S. Eliot. 

Fletcher's Field in Montreal, 30 April 2011

It's the end of April, 2011; here we are at Fletcher's Field, officially it is Jeanne Mance Park; this is a monument to Sir George-Etienne Cartier, a place of weekly gatherings where people smoke dope, play drums (tam tams), socialize, and picnic.

 

28 & 29 April 2011

 

Driving along Cedar Avenue, passed the Montreal General Hospital, then turning left onto Pine Avenue and proceeding east.  

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5001538,-73.5857801,3a,75y,51.21h,79.05t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sV2rsd-piV8AGO8NeVsVbog!2e0!5s20220801T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D10.946246220556986%26panoid%3DV2rsd-piV8AGO8NeVsVbog%26yaw%3D51.21009462296646!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDQyMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The hidden trail, 23 April 2025

Peace and quiet on the hidden trail.

CZ at Cote St. Luc Shopping centre, 25 April 2012

 

Belvedere Terry-Fox on rue St. Jacques, April 2025

A walk on the Belvedere Terry Fox on 14 April 2025. 

14 April 2025

On Louis Dudek’s "Continuation"

Cross-Section: Poems 1940-1980 (Coach House Press, 1980), Louis Dudek

 

My copy of Louis Dudek’s  Cross-Section: Poems 1940-1980 (1980) used to belong to my friend Sonja Skarsteft, it is one of several books given to me by Sonja’s husband, Geof Isherwood, after Sonja’s passing and it is a book that I treasure because it was Sonja's and it was inscribed to her by another friend, Louis Dudek. Cross-Section is a selection of Dudek’s previously unpublished poems, organized in chronological order from 1940 to 1980. A poem entitled "Fragment of Continuum", the final poem in the book, immediately caught my attention, written in 1980 it is similar to Dudek's Continuation poems in its form and content; the poem is conversational, it is a stream of consciousness that easily fits as a part of Continuation, albeit not quite as good as Continuation, but there must be some connection between this poem and Continuation.

Dudek was uneasy about publishing Continuation, it is idiosyncratic, unlike anything else he wrote, and either readers are willing to extend their idea of what poetry is or they dismiss it as obscure and without artistic value. Continuation was not well received even by Dudek's friends; for instance, Mike Gnarowski was condescending about the poem when I mentioned it to him a year or so before he died. But Louis persevered, as any poet must persevere who writes something considerably out of the main stream of contemporary poetry or their usual work; however, Continuation is also similar to Dudek’s previously published long poems and it is a development on his previous poems. It was years in creative gestation before it was finally published; it also parallels Dudek's growth as a poet.  

Here (revised) is the publishing history of Continuation from my essay, "Reading Louis Dudek’s Continuation: An introduction to a major Canadian poem", published in "Montreal Serai" around December 2013: 

The publishing history of Continuation is interesting; Continuation I ( 1981) and Continuation II (1989) were published as separate volumes by Vehicule Press; Continuation III was never completed but parts of it were published in two separate books, they are:

Continuation III, found in The Caged Tiger (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997), has four sections; “Bits and Pieces”, included in The Caged Tiger, was section five of Continuation III.

Dudek’s last book, The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000), concludes with "Sequence from 'Continuation III', which would be section six of "Continuation III".

In Dudek's "White Book", his Collected Poetry (1971), there is an excerpt from "Continuation I" which he subtitled "An infinite Poem in Progress". Dudek’s explanation of "Fragment of Continuum", published the year before Continuation I was published, is also explained but in a footnote to the poem, and it could also describe what he is doing in Continuation; a "continuum" he defines as "Something in which a fundamental common character is discernible amid a series of insensible or indefinite variations". As in Continuation.

There should have been Continuation III, not only excerpts published in two of Dudek’s books.  I am told that Dudek’s literary executor was Mike Gnarowski, but probably due to old age or dislike of Continuation, Professor Gnarowski never published a complete three volume Continuation; there should be three volumes to this work--it should be triadic--the number three suggesting completion, a creative and archetypal manifestation of the creative spirit. Continuation remains incomplete as two volumes; the number two as an archetypal number suggesting the absence of completion, and this reminds us that the poem remains unfinished.

Multiple book length poems are difficult to write and to get published, and difficult to sustain to completion; for instance, some long poems do not cohere, think of Pound's Cantos or Olson's Maxiumus Poems. Dudek's Continuation ends in the poet's acknowledgement that old age preoccupies his thinking and his daily activity and the poem shows the effect of being old; with the exception of William Carlos Williams' Paterson, the long poem is not the domain of old poets as Dudek experienced. Of course, there are exceptions, there always are, but still, few old people have the energy required to maintain a sustained creative effort such as the long poem. That’s just common sense.