The Death of Orpheus

During the early years of the twentieth century, English poets’ fondness for the traditional forms of poetry began to slip away. The horrors of war and the waste lands of broken civilisation did not fit easily into the soothing patterns of traditional metrical verse and rhyme. Telling the urgent truth became important. The democratisation of culture also played its part. TS Eliot’s The Waste Land stands at the crossroads of this change. Was it the last of its literary line, or the gateway to a new poetic world?