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Fri 05 May 2010The Poet And The City
We don’t expect bankers to be great poets, but when TS Eliot took up a job at Lloyds he would occasionally break from his work to jot down a few lines. And with ‘The Waste Land’ he crafted a poem that resonates today, writes ALAN O’RIORDAN
WHEN WE think of the poet in the city, we picture the flâneur: someone who is in the crowd, but observing it too; caught in the teeming metropolis, but not blind to what it means; able to divine images from the constant flux. The poet is alive to the comings and goings of cities, the coincidences, the anonymity, the constant tumult of significance and silliness. But, not rushing to the office, he notices.
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