I need to explicate this poem into a four page paper.

I started working on the first few stanzas, and I thought I was on a roll. Then I got second thoughts about what it means. At first I thought it was about the build up of sexual tension within old men, then reading over about a million times, it seems more like it's about status in society. I could be very wrong on both of these assumptions. I'm very confused at this point. Could anyone give me a general idea on what this poem could possibly mean? Eliot is so complicated. Thank you!




The August wind is shambling down the street

A blind old man who coughs and spits sputters
Stumbling among the alleys and the gutters.

He pokes and prods
With senile patience
The withered leaves
Of our sensations —

And yet devoted to the pure idea
One sits delaying in the vacant square
Forced to endure the blind inconscient stare
Of twenty leering houses that exude
The odour of their turpitude
And a street piano through the dusty trees
Insisting: “Make the best of your position” —
The pure Idea dies of inanition
The street pianos through the trees
Whine and wheeze.

Imaginations
Masturbations
The withered leaves
Of our sensations —

The eye retains the images,
The sluggish brain will not react
Nor distils
The dull precipitates of fact
The emphatic mud of physical sense
The cosmic smudge of an enormous thumb
Posting bills
On the soul. And always come
The whine and wheeze
Of street pianos through the streets

Imagination’s
Poor relations
The withered leaves
Of our sensations.

Absolute! complete idealist
A supersubtle peasant
(Conception most unpleasant)
A supersubtle peasant in a shabby square
Assist me to the pure idea —
Regarding nature without love or fear
For a little while, a little while
Standing our ground —
Till life evaporates into a smile
Simple and profound.

Street pianos through the trees
Whine and wheeze

Imagination’s
Defecations
The withered leaves
Of our sensations —

Way cool - a poem not to be easily found on the internet sites (at least with a quick search by me just now). Some notes here:

[classweb.gmu.edu]

For some reason, the rhythm/meter reminds me of the sort of controlled rambling to be found in Preludes, or even Prufrock.

Anyway, it should be safe to decide personally what the message is, then wing it for four pages, knowing one cannot easily be proved wrong. More than likely one will be graded on the strength of any given presentation rather than whether that interpretation is the 'correct' one.

Things to consider:

Meter - varied with pentameter, tetrameter and dimeter lines, endings masculine and feminine mixed

Some lines end stopped, some with enjambment

Find examples of assonance, consonance and alliteration

Rhymes varied, some couplets, some greatly separated, some not paired at all

Punctuation - some sentences short & sweet, some wander on aimlessly

How does it flow off the tongue? Read it out loud and praise or attack the choices made.

Repetition of the imagination's quatrains - this must be the message TSE wants to impart, and the filler lines merely examples? Is the poem itself an example of the chosen theme? Is is self referencing, that is.