‘The Waste Land,’ epitomizing literary modernism, is one of the most important poems of the 20th century portraying its despondent mood in a new form.
'The Waste Land' is one of the best and most famous poems of T.S. Eliot as it best exemplifies its time, Eliot's poetic qualities, his literary theories on poetry, and the dominant concerns of his poems. Eliot is known for its complexity and fragmented structure while using literary, cultural, historical, mythological, and religious allusions in his poetry; 'The Waste Land' is replete with fragmented, hard-to-connect images and complex allusions. Even in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" (1921), Eliot emphasized the need for allusion, indirectness, and complexity in poetry to capture the complexities of the contemporaneous era. With its complexity, allusions, and representation of the alienated, fragmented, spiritually barren, and culturally confused world of the post-war 20th Century, 'The Waste Land' culminates and best represents Eliot's poetic style.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.