The only card the clairvoyant can't see is the card to tell the future. And people visit her to see the future.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Fortune teller. I like tarot cards(have tattoos of Magician and Sun lol), so I'll try to give some input on what cards are being laid down and what they mean.

Most of the tarot cards used in this stanza are fake ones Eliot made up, but it's interesting to see what it means.

She's supposed to be a cooky ol' tarot reader. I googled Sosostris(as you have to google every line of this goddamn poem), and she is a reference to Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow, where a woman named Madame Sesostris is a fraud and tells horrible fortunes.

The next line is funny. "Had a bad cold, nevertheless/ Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe" is the speaker trying to justify why she was telling bad fortunes.

A six card spread is the most common spread for a tarot reading. Asked my reader friend what a six spread usually means, so I put his response in parenthesis and the actual reading after them.

(6th spread goes like this btw)

1. (how u feel abt yourself) drowned Phoenician Sailor
2. (what you want) Belladonna
3. (what you fear) Three of Wands
4. (what you have going for you) Fortune
5. (what you have going against you) One-eyed Merchant
6. (likely outcome) Blank

Which is funny. The likely outcome is blank because Eliot himself doesn't know where the world is headed. Scholars have argued since this poem's publishing whether or not the poem is optimistic. He's hinting that he doesn't know himself, we choose, and I think that our power of agency is optimistic.

SS's Tempest. Lol.

This is told to assure the person receiving the fortune. The Hanged Man is a christ-like figure, the self-sacrifice for rejuvenation. Because we have monkey brains, we think Hanged Man Bad, but it's more like Hanged Man Okay.

Major Arcana, Wheel of Fortune. What it sounds like. Typically a good thing.

Three of wands, tied with the concept of drought.

Eliot established water is life, so it's funny that someone died to water here.

Jesus, that imagery is powerful. Personifying the landscape to a person makes the Wasteland a metonymy for each individual person.

Repetition of how decrepit the land is.

This poem is so fun to say out loud. It's like following her consciousness move through ideas by association and sound. "Colored frame/ Couple of canning" is fun to say aloud. Stein shat on the idea that poetry needed a form or even be anything more than words; in her story "Play," she wanted to remove the signified from the signifier.

Not what I expected at all.

That's funny, like he picked which persona got what.

That's not how it works, buddy.

This is going to be a story about class and the divide.

Splitting it in two.

English sonnet, iambic pentameter, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

English sonnet in iambic tetra(4 feet)meter. ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Shakespeare made it, usually to emphasis the cause and the effect. Petrarchan sonnets are 8 lines problem and 6 solution, English sonnets are often 12 lines problem and 2 solution.

This emphasizes the conclusion here. An iron cortex means a powerful, shielding outer layer for the mind. That calls back to the rose's armor she put on.

To survive the brutal age means hardening the self.

Petrarchan sonnet. ABBA ABBA CDD CDD

A form usually used in the English gentry, the narrator as a pining young man chasing after an affluent woman who could never be with him. A narrator reaching for the unreachable.

Seems poetic that this would be a "love" poem for someone ultimately unreachable: dead.

This places love and death in opposition, which is a huge theme in 1900s lit. Reminds me of Auden's "We must love one another or die."

So, love is not all to life but it is the opposite of death. Life and love are partners, like the end of the poem suggests. We need love.

I'm confused about this poem.

He is stopping in the middle of the forest, enjoying the air and woods, but has to press on. It's not even a poem of remembrance or reminiscence. He's not ruminating on anything, just enjoying the time but has to keep going.

Mofo that's just every day.

That applies to a lot of things. I think this poem drives home tension between two people and how it is resolved.

A good metaphor is a relationship; the narrator thinks clearly established boundaries are good for the relationship, and the s/o thinks having clear cut lines and where not to cross are better.

It's a philosophical question. End all be all, a line is arbitrary. But it makes life easier when there is a line. But when you think about it, the line can never be properly placed. But the line makes solving disputes easier.

I don't think we can agree with either sentiment fully.

Is that how it works? I understand we need a metaphorical split between the two properties, but I don't think trees care about neighborhood disputes about property rights.

These things never go well. Both parties want more than they actually own.

First mention of a specific person, moving from the macrocosm of society into the micro of the specific neighborhood. This zooming in means we're about to see conflict.

This is the narrator's nearest neighbor and they need to establish their boundaries.

Old "Stone of help" (Hebrew) Flood. What an oxymoronic name.

Why be so worried for greatness? We're doing the same old shit, over and over. Enjoy the life and live it instead of worrying about greatness.

Easy to say that when you win the Pulitzer prize three times and get nominated for the Nobel prize 4 times.

A certain amount of cloth or wool.

That means people who didn't consider both coins of religion were in charge. AKA dumbos.

A play by Goethe, a German Romantic writer. Smart doctor makes a pact with Mephistopheles, one of Satan's best goons, and fucks around for 20 years in exchange for his soul. He ends up going to Heaven in Goethe's, unlike all the other Faustian tales that came before. The play is considered anti-church. 2 points for anti church.

By Longfellow, American poet. Woman loses her love, goes to America, and finds him after 60 years of working for Jesus. Pro-religion.

2-2 for and against religion on these texts.

Another piece about religion. Butler was a Christian skeptic and after years of consideration, Christianity beat his skepticism. This book became the chief argument against nonbelievers.

Volney: Against religion. Butler: for religion.

Reviews human history for the first part of the book. Second part of the book is a battle royal between religions, and they all try to argue for their religion to be the truth.

No religion wins. Volney calls for separation of church and state.

Is this the poet's point of view? Ok boomer.

A poem celebrating the simplicity of being a rural housewife doesn't address the crises of urban life. This is a stupid argument. "Waaaaaa, kids these days are always mad. Just stop being mad!"

And the diction of degenerate. Jesus. It sticks out because the diction of the rest of the poem is simple, and then there's d e g e n e r a t e. It sticks out. And it's horrible.

These are a series of epitaphs, all written about those who died and usually from their point of view. Spoon River is in Illinois, and I think the majority of these poems are going to be critical of the Midwest Smalltown Experience^tm.

The man was a lawyer. Perhaps he was into urban centers more than rural life.

Compton is a weird name for the Midwest.

The outlet = the problem is a common fallacy. Symptoms for the root of the problem.

Aristotle deemed humans half rational and half irrational. Operating under only one half's purview will ignore the other half of her humanity.

Just because feelings are irrational doesn't make them unreal.

Whether or not this is a story about irrational or a story about some weird poison in yellow paper is up for debate. A very short debate, but it exists.

Obvious repetition to hammer down her powerlessness.

We begin with her lack of power. The story is well known for being an descent into "madness" that actually protects her in a patriarchal society.

"Madness" is often used to regain some form of agency. See: Hamlet's Ophelia and Hamlet, Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff, The Stranger, etc.

DuBois is a well-read man. He knows this alludes to the German Romantics, which calls for a black renaissance. He'll get it, too.

DuBois deliberately picks words with a musical connotation, including many songs and choruses. A unity of voice, a unity of a people.

If only everybody could adopt this mindset.

I still have to teach my boss how to use a scanner.

Adams served Lincoln as an ambassador to the UK. That was a loooong time ago. He's out of his element.

Knowledge cannot be grasped without context. If Adams was only taught the highlights or the greatest hits, he didn't gain the knowledge. It's only chaos.

To learn everything in the Paris Exposition that is to learn would take several lifetimes because we need context to sufficiently understand something. Both depth and breadth of knowledge explode in the 1800s. To think that a person in 2019 could dedicate 70 years of their life to a single subject and still not grasp every straw would not surprise Adams. He understands.

A world fair in Paris which showcased the beauty, evolution, and radical changes that mankind pushed through all the 1800s.

As such, we can expect a bashing of industrialization in some form.

And education! Yaaaaaaay!

Part of Levine's commentary about They Feed They Lion:

" It is, I believe, the most potent expression of rage I have written, rage at my government for the two racial wars we were then fighting, one in the heart of our cities against our urban poor, the other in Asia against a people determined to decide their own fate. The poem was written one year after what in Detroit is still called "The Great Rebellion" although the press then and now titled it a race riot."

We don't need that to know that this poem is telling the US government that they're about to awaken a lion in their citizenry, but it's good historical context for why Levine is making these threats.

Stumps can't grow. : (

Farmer's diction: Burlap sacks, butter, bean bread, tar, creosote (distilled coal tar used to preserve wood), drive shafts, dollies.

In the way of technology, sounds like after dust bowl but not recent. Levine was writing for the late 60s or early 70s, then.

The diction of this poem is plain. That alone will tell us what audience Levine is pining for. What's the longest word? "Forgiven?" Chances are this is for lower to middle class.