Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses the structure of the poem.

When Eliot first published The Waste Land in 1922, it caused a colossal stir in the literary world and in society in general. Eliot's use of nontraditional techniques, his gritty imagery, and the sheer incoherence of the work as a whole mystified, enraged, and enthralled readers and critics. As Helen Vendler notes in her 1998 Time article, "Modern poetry had struck its note." In fact, readers had never seen anything quite this modern before. The poem seemed to have a little bit of everything, and was much meatier than the other literary offerings of the time, and not just in Europe. Vendler notes that "Whether or not Eliot had written down the Armageddon of the West, he had showed up the lightweight poetry dominating American...