"East Coker IV" by T.S. Eliot

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Topics discussed in this episode include:

-"T.S. Eliot: The Illusion of Reaction" by Yvor Winters

-Les poetes maudites Tristan Corbiere et Jules Laforgue

-When Eliot was taken to Pound town

-The objective correlative and its problems

-This is basically what East Coker is

-The "Logic" of Imagery (Crane: "Well, one of us is going to have to change!")

-Nancy Drew And The Curious Case of Why Eliot Thinks He's A Classicist

-The Dissociation of Sensibility 

-"Life is difficult, so like... poetry should be difficult, man!" 

-The fallacy of imitative form

-"Sweet Caroline" just sounds better than "Sweet Jacobean"

-A forbidden fruit a day keeps Dr. Jesus away

-Every rose has its thorn, except Mary's

-From Satan's creature to God's preacher

Text of poem:

East Coker IV

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital

Endowed by the ruined millionaire,

Wherein, if we do well, we shall

Die of the absolute paternal care

That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires

Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.