East Coker...

 In class we discussed the similarities between “Burnt Norton” and “East Coker” but I think this proved a difficult task because to me, the poems are so different. “Burnt Norton” seems to be a poem very centered on a specific event. It is about the love and the literal and figurative events that prevented it from developing. In “East Coker” it is harder to grasp the event that Eliot is talking about. He seems so detached from the event and its effect on him. In my Romantic Period class we recently discussed the way romanticism is more about the affect of the event on the speaker, and less on the event itself. In this poem it seems as if Eliot is detached from the event and its effect on him. Instead of it being something that is important to him and something that the reader can relate to, it turns into a text that is unapproachable for both the writer and the reader. I honestly could not wrap my mind around the elements of the text.
Unlike “Burnt Norton” this text becomes a fusion of metaphoric ideas without a clear cut resolution. It reminds me of the same confusion that Eliot probably feels at this point in his life as he struggles with his personal and spiritual life. In the fifth section, he seems to allude to the third poem in his series, by stating he is in the middle. The foreshadowing of the middle lets me that something will be resolved in the next poem. It is as though the poem is intentionally written to show the way one can be lost in the spiral.