Quizbowl Poetry

“Best minds destroyed by madness” opening line

Howl

“I’m with you in Rockland” and Carl Solomon

Howl

Moloch, modern/industrial evil, “sphinx of cement and aluminum”

Howl

“Holy! Holy! Holy!” litany

Howl

Beat generation imagery (hipsters, jazz, drugs, urban despair)

Six Gallery reading, published by City Lights

Howl

Obscenity trial

Howl

“Measured out my life with coffee spoons”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“Do I dare…?”, indecision and self-consciousness

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Women “come and go / talking of Michelangelo”

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Aging anxiety (bald spot, “grow old,” not Prince Hamlet)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Urban, foggy imagery + mermaids / surreal reflections

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

First professional published poem by Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Shift away from 19th century romanticism and toward modernism

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre” and falcon imagery

The Second Coming

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” chaos, collapse of order

The Second Coming

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”

The Second Coming

Apocalyptic imagery (“blood-dimmed tide,” “stony sleep vexed to nightmare”)

The Second Coming

Final image, the “rough beast… slouching towards Bethlehem to be born”

The Second Coming

Use of Christian imagery in post-WWI Europe

The Second Coming

Written following Easter Uprising, also connected to 1918-19 flu pandemic

The Second Coming

Originally titled The Second Birth

The Second Coming

Carpe diem setup, “Had we but world enough and time”

To His Coy Mistress

Urgency and mortality, “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”

To His Coy Mistress

Hyperbolic courtship, “Vegetable love… vaster than empires, and more slow”

To His Coy Mistress

Death as argument, “The grave’s a fine and private place, but none… do there embrace”

To His Coy Mistress

Seize the moment, “roll all our strength and all / our sweetness up into one ball”

To His Coy Mistress

Referenced in Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

To His Coy Mistress

Quoted in “Farewell to Arms” by Hemingway

To His Coy Mistress