B. P. Rinehart's Reviews > The Waste Land and Other Writings

Well this is awkward. It turns out there ARE notes/annotations for The Waste Land after the poem, notes by no-less than Eliot himself! But, the catch is that much of it is non-english which means I still can't read it, which means Eliot in his modernist fashion has meta-trolled me, which means that despite the corrections of my original review the rating is unchanged. I will not take any words out but merely cross out the places were I feel I erred.

"The reason why I gave this 3 stars is NOT because of the poem itself (I think it is one of the greatest ever written). My main problem is the book itself and its lack of annotations, which to many makes this poem semi-impossible to understand. It would also be a big help for students; for a reader in general who would want to know what Elliot was trying to convey, some annotations and minor translations would gave helped. With notes With translations this publication of the poem could have easily been a 5 star rating for me. The other essays and poems in this book on the other hand are fine and I recommend reading them to see if you agree with his view of literature. But again even those selections could have benefited from translations and notes."

Really it would not have killed the editors to have footnotes or endnotes. I will try to review more poetry and essays from the book never-the-less. The notes/annotations that Eliot wrote are invaluable, it's just a lot of it is in greek or itatlian. For Eliot fans this is a good book to have if you find it cheap, otherwise I would get an anthology with notes by someone OTHER than the author himself. (I did have a good laugh at how trollific the notes are. One of the reasons I enjoy this genre is because they stick to their guns as far as style-no exceptions).

For my review of The Waste Land proper...see The Waste Land.