Eliot rant

**i thought this was a bit pretentious so i tried to edit a bit**
an alarming number of people claim that Thomas Eliot is *esoteric.* i beg to differ. no: i just differ. vehemently. take The Waste Land, for example. i grant it is difficult, even acrobatic. if one troubles to break it down to any degree, however, one will find that Eliot uses the sources common to any good artist or poet: mythology (the nightengale and tiresius), shakespeare (especially the tempest), wagner (especially das ring des niebelungen and tristan und isolde), history, and geography. what is so esoteric about that? if you look into norse mythology, old english, and ancient british history, you will discover that tolkien lifted half of his languages and ideas from those sources. eliot does the same thing. he uses a more fragmented manner because he is trying to write a poem that reflected the fragmented confusion of post-Great War europe. he does use personal experience (what artist doesn't!), but still in a universal manner. what is so obscure about a nostalgia, insomnia, adultery, neuroses? i'm not especially well-versed in these things; i'm not a particularly good scholar--i'm too lazy and careless--but i have found that it doesn't take extraordinary amounts of knowledge to make Eliot's poetry accessible or meaningful. it just takes some time and care to actually read the poem. the more knowledge one has about the great works of literature, history and so forth, the more meaning can be seen, but that does not mean his poems have no meaning without that knowledge. it means that eliot's observations and commentary are not baby food, that they actually take some time for thought, to make connections, draw parallels, and so forth. this is a basic principle of literary analysis that should be used anyway, for any poem or novel or whatever. so there is my tirade. feedback appreciated.