Books: He Do the Police In Different Voices

The Waste Land of T. S. Eliot, if not this century's greatest poem in English, is certainly its most famous. Long, difficult and often enigmatic, it is full of quotations. It flits into parodies of other men's poems and prose, and is widely quoted, often unconsciously by some people who may think that the title, which has passed into the language, means a vacant lot. The poem is taught in English-lit classes, and could be called the Odyssey or the Divine Comedy of the pre-Ginsberg generation.

In ways too obscure or subtle to analyze,...