I'm just going to link the poem here because it's a pretty long read (but worth it). I chose this poem for a couple of reasons: 1) the epigraph, 2) the repetition.
The epigraph is an excerpt from Dante's Inferno. This relates back to the chapter, Vessel of Remembrance, because it quite literally calls back to a much older work than the one the reader is currently taking in.
The poem itself employs a few different types of repetition, for examples, the lines "The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, // The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes," are almost the same, but not quite. Repeating some words and phrases but changing others. I like what Hirshfield has to say about repetition, "Repetition embracing variation is the thread of the cloth Mnemosyne wears." Eliot uses repetition in such a long poem to continuously jog the reader's memory, otherwise, they risk getting lost in the lines.
Hello Emma,
First off, I love this poem (and T.S. Eliot). For me, Eliot has an amazing way at combining nostalgia with a heightened sense of future. It is absolutely wonderful and something beautiful I found about remembrance in this poem was the line "There will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;" ... to me it felt like combining a thought from the past and breathing it into the future.
I wonder if anyone has found a more contemporary poem that calls back to Eliot--a sort of remembrance inception. I think this is some of the work of a poet these days--to bring these echoes forward into the current environment.
This is one of my favorite poems from Eliot, the music is really interesting and the story seems to be layered, with many different interpretations. The way that the author mocks the narrator makes it seem as though Eliot looks down on this man--although, I have speculations that Eliot is referring to his own insecurities throughout much of this poem. As far as a tool of remembrance, the poem makes the narrator, J. Alfred Prufrock, into a well-known character in literature, much like the stories of the Greek gods. Furthermore, he works to capture the details of a moment like the smells, the people, and the yellow smoke.