Search results
Waste Paper
- Looking on even this hatchet job, Lovecraft must have felt he’d failed to slay the beast, and so he composed a parody of “The Waste Land” entitled “Waste Paper” in late 1922 or early 1923.
www.openculture.com/2018/03/h-p-lovecraft-writes-waste-paper-a-poem-of-profound-insignificance.html
H. P. Lovecraft's response to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. No doubt he was inspired and driven by having his prissy New England sensibilities be personally victimized by Eliot's modernism. But the end result is a surprisingly good parody. You can find it online for free here: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...
- (17)
It is indeed a criticism of it, and shows Lovecraft's detachment from the common sentiments of his era. He critiqued Eliot emphatically with his counter poem, and was not in the least impressed with Eliots attempt "to grapple" with his world view.
Jun 22, 2017 · This poem is a parody of T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land, and mondernist poetry in general, which Lovecraft referred to as a "practically meaningless collection of phrases, learned allusions, quotations, slang, and scraps in general."
- II
- III
- IV
"Shantih, shantih, shantih"..."Shanty House" Was the name of a novel by I forget whom Published serially in the "All-Story Weekly" Before it was a weekly. Advt. Disillusion is wonderful, I've been told, And I take quinine to stop a cold But it makes my ears... always... Always ringing in my ears... It is the ghost of the Jew I murdered that Christm...
In the office of the librarian of Congress America was discovered in 1492 This way out. No, lady, you gotta change at Washington St. to the Everett train. Out in the rain on the elevated Crated, sated, all mismated. Twelve seats on this bench, How quaint. In a shady nook, beside a brook, two lovers stroll along. Express to Park Ave., Car Following....
The stag at eve had drunk his fill The thirsty hart look'd up the hill And craned his neck just as a feeler To advertise the Double-Dealer. William Congreve was a gentleman O art what sins are committed in thy name For tawdry fame and fleeting flame And everything, ain't dat a shame? Mah Creole Belle, ah lubs yo' well; Aroun' mah heart you hab cast...
H. P. Lovecraft was among many to speculate that this was Eliot's My Immortal, that he was trolling the readers or pulling their leg. Lovecraft's quasi-Joycean parody, Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance, is delightfully refreshing to anyone who's had this inflicted on them in school.
The Waste Land is the poem of a young man whose defenses sometimes wanted to manifest themselves as clinical superiorities. In canceling the overt contempt (while retaining social satire), Eliot allowed a sober pity to surround both the pub scene and the seduction in the typist’s flat.
