If you'd like to join the beginner-friendly course "The Waste Land in Slow Motion" beginning April 21, sign up ($15) by joining Versed at: https://versedcommunity.mn.co/
Check out the course syllabus here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EvvTAtvoTSUvb2jX8wjXgY8eQlzhBm98j8FaCb1ndko/edit?tab=t.0

If TS Eliot felt like a disappointment to his dad, we all cooked

I first read it age 19, now I’m 73. As I’ve read it over the years it grows in greatness and meaning.

bertrand russell thing is the most insane lore drop ive heard since byron's entire personal life

Profound lecture. Beautiful. “His life felt like a cage of circumstances”. Who cannot relate?

I grew up in lausanne and attended U of Chicago studying social sciences, history 20 years ago. (A dozen plus top notch profs, Nobel prizes) Adam is a breath of fresh air, his lectures are priceless. Though to be clear: there is little correlation between prizes and impact on students.
Tk u adam, i have learnt tons from your videos.

Kudos to you, Dr. Walker, for keeping literature alive and accessible in the digital age.

Such  a magnificent poem.  In college I had a charismatic  English professor who introduced us to it and I’ve never forgotten either  this poem  or  her.⚛️

"I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’"

I think something I find fascinating is how Pound did a deep edit and cut out the Elizabethan in Eliot's writings. I mean that Pound put the modern in Eliot. However, Eliot influenced by many had a direct connect with Robert Browning who reintroduced the dramatic into poetry. The Browning influence can be found in the voices. There is also of course the music hall and like James Joyce, Eliot was fond of playing and the musical in his writing. You can literally sing the Waste Land.

The Wasteland is such a masterpiece and stands up to our times so perfectly.

Eliot reminds me of the importance of experiencing abandoning yourself to awesomeness of the wide open spaces of nature in the mountains .   How so  ??
Because......... in the mountains, there you feel  free .   Yes. Yes.  Yes.  
Indeed  I  do.

Beautifully explained. We need more of this on YouTube.

I have been working for months on a poem about discovering late in life that my grandfather was Elliot's fellow-St. Louis poet, Orrick Johns. Your videos have been of enormous value, helping me shape and craft and layer this work, Found Generations, over the many hours I worked on it every day for weeks. I perhaps have finally made a poem that could stand up to close reading. Thanks.

I recall reading that when William Carlos Williams read “The Waste Land,” he groaned. It would send poetry, he feared, right back to the classroom. To a certain extent, he was probably right, but we’re all the richer for it.

So many lives feel like a cage of circumstances. A morass of inescapable commitments, obligations, and burdens. Yet, as Eliot demonstrated, even the depths of sorrow and despair cannot repress great art from surfacing. There’s always hope, that despite our struggles, we can pursue creative passions and maybe, just maybe, something great will flower.

Brilliant. Seemingly delivered effortlessly.

I love the wastelands it's so hopeful to me. It doesnt say everything will be okay nothings wrong, but it tells you that its on you to make it through and make the best of it. The fisher king is old and tired and hurt and wants to rest, but until salvation comes he will let out a weary sigh and do what he can with whats there. The journey for the grail can not even start until someone is decent and cares about the world, asks him what ails him. Datta Dayadhvam Damyata. Give sympathize control. Peace that passes understanding. Because you cant cure the waste land, but you can share your rations with your neighbor, yiu can control yourself, you can commiserate with others and find peace in the fact fhat while you don't understand you have done what you can. April may be the cruelest month, because in the winter you dont know if its a wasteland yet and can hope when the snow melts there will be viable land, but if the snow never melts you still won't have food or a game plan, just a hope that goes nowhere. So let the snow melt, get a lay of the land, and start composting. Theres plenty dead here to work with.

Very Good!  Very lucid,  Well done.

Bro you are delivering the facts very logically and vehemently and you are only person whose lecture attracts me on YouTube keep it up your information is very critical and I like that