Publication year 1922
Genre Poem, Fiction
Themes Community, Conflict
Tags Lyric Poem
By any measure—influence, scope, durability, reputation—T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” published in 1922, stands as the defining English-language poem of the 20th century. No other single poem is more widely read, more widely quoted, more widely imitated, or more widely interpreted. The poem itself—notoriously difficult to read given Eliot’s vast erudition and determination to upend all inherited assumptions about the function and form of a poem—is largely a war poem, or more precisely, a... Read The Waste Land Summary