the enso

"The Lighthouse at Verona Beach" by marlowe

the poem

There is nothing before
there is one. We are taught
systems, each starting with zero,
ordering our lives in straight lines
that never intersect, parallel possibilities
we learn to design and then build.
We have read the ancient texts,
perhaps even tread the cobbled stones
paved by Roman armies, meandered
between Corinthian columns, or climbed
the Mayan pyramids, hoping each echoing step
brought us closer to our origins, closer
to a divinity we could not define
via mathematics. We push forward
like arrows, like trains whose brakes have failed.
As we outlined our borders, coloring
inside the lines, squares within squares
like nested dolls, taming
ourselves in our wild world, we erected
lighthouses on the shoreline
just in case we needed to know where
the beckoning waves ended.

A favorite poem is like that first great kiss: you never forget it. The mere mention of it makes your face blush and your heart beat a little faster.

I first read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when I was just a junior in High School. I immediately fell in love, hard. Its gauzy spell never shook loose, never left me. To this day, I squeal when I find fragments of the poem reused, whether wrapped in pop culture or an academic treatise.

Why?

You see, unlike the very heady and often cryptic “Waste Land” (T.S. Eliot‘s most famous poem), “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” beckons to you from the first stanza. The language teases you, takes you for a walk, and leaves you breathless.

Its modern sensibility, its bleakness, its layered definition of love remain fresh despite the staleness of the title character. We may now measure our days with text messages instead of coffee spoons, but Prufrock’s cautionary tale about the perils of an ordinary adulthood nonetheless resonate. The bitter angst still bites. The wistful hope still lingers. And the unmatched desire remains almost inaudible.

Read It

Check out the full poem at Bartleby.com.

Hear It

Hear T.S. Eliot read his poem:

What’s your favorite poem?

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