Y Ddraig Goch

April 26 2025 - T S Eliot

Prompt: T. S. Eliot said, April is the cruelest month in his1921 poem The Waste Land. Are you familiar with the poem The Waste Land? Do you agree or disagree with his analogy.?

I'm familiar with T.S. Eliot. He was a constant in my English literature class, and we spent weeks reading and dissecting "The Waste Land". I remember listening to a reading by Alex Guiness, which was quite an experience as it wasn't something I related with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

My lasting impression of it is... it's long (it felt never-ending), depressing, very conversational (Obi-Wan did a lot of accents) and mentioned a lot of flowers. It may be considered a masterpiece and Eliot's greatest piece of work, but it gives me PTSD just thinking about it.

Do I agree with April being the cruellest month? No!

I think he was knees deep in post WW1 trauma and was waxing lyrically about it. April is the middle of spring. When life is breathing back into the landscape. Flowers are breaking through hard ground, lambs of frolicking in fields, and the days are getting longer with each dawn - literally there is daylight savings. It's the epitome of hope and optimism.