7/2/2023 0 Comments Love song alfred prufrockRoots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed atĪs for me, I knew I’d found a “home” when I joined a women’s online network and more than half of the “welcome” e-mails I received contained women sharing their favorite “Prufrock” lines with me-my e-mail address has a reference to the poem. On the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. The pages of a book in my hands would take The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel “But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of There’s the complex, elusive poet/musician Leonard Cohen, whose lyrics in “The Stranger Song,” just to mention one instance, mirror Eliot’s references to strangers (“I told you when I came I was a stranger”), to smoke (“there’s a highway that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder”), to the grand and gritty (“the holy game of poker”), to Eliot’s use of repetitions: I see echoes of “Prufrock” reverberating more obliquely in the culture, too. And a new generation is connected to “Prufrock” outside the classroom, with John Green’s Y.A.-fiction best-seller, The Fault in Our Stars, which contains a meaningful shout-out to the poem. You can even take toast and tea at the Prufrock Café in London or dine at the Prufrock Pizzeria in downtown Los Angeles. Edgar Hoover” in National Lampoon in the early 70s (“The agents call and call again/ Talking of Daniel Berrigan”) to Lauren Daisley’s “The Closest Jay Comes to a Love Song” in 2006 (“At the rager the chicks come and go/Talking about art or something, I don’t know”). Satirists, too, have had their way with it, from humorist Sean Kelly’s “The Love Song of J. There is Chuck D’s song “Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?” and Arcade Fire’s nod in “We Used to Wait” the entire poem has been set to music, by American composer John Craton. And, my personal favorite, Owen Wilson as Gil in Midnight in Paris, declares, “Prufrock is my mantra!” ( Annie Hall fans may see the continuity from Jeff Goldblum’s cry to his shrink over the phone, “I forgot my mantra!”) One could even view Allen’s To Rome With Love as an homage to the poem. I don’t want to look up at 50 and realize I measured out my fucking life with a coffee spoon.” In Love and Death (1975), one of Allen’s characters, pen in hand, cribs a few lines from the poem. In Celebrity (1998) Kenneth Branagh’s character agonizes, “I’m fucking Prufrock. He cited the poem in three pictures (two of which were released in the last decade). Prufrock can only experience love through other people, at second- and third-hand.The auteur with the most prevalent Prufrock references: Woody Allen. He truly believes his beloved has sent him signals that she likes him, but he is worried that he might be misinterpreting her signals. Prufrock imagines that his love would say, "That is not what I meant at all." What would she be responding to, and what did he think she ‘"meant.".What is the real reason that Prufrock never asks his "overwhelming question"?.At what points in the poem does he seem more interested in love, and at what points does he not seem to care?.Is the title accurate in calling the poem a "love song"? Do you think Prufrock is really in love?.Whatever it is, the feeling never goes anywhere, and Prufrock is left to drown with his would-be beloved in the deep, deep ocean. But he’s so vain and so taken up with trivial pleasure like coffee and peaches that it’s hard to believe that the feeling he has is really "love." It might just be lust or just a strong attraction. There are a couple of points where he almost overcomes his massive fear of rejection, especially when he is standing on top of the stairs and wondering, "Do I dare?" (line 38). Maybe he’s too shy to speak his mind, although "cowardly" seems more accurate. He speaks about himself a lot, and he ignores her, or "us," for most of the poem. It’s hard to tell whether Prufrock is really in love with the person he is talking to.
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