Poetry Week: Profe recites T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”

“April is the cruelest month…” But it also is as good a time as any to read and recite poetry.

I have loved T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” for over two decades. I’ve listened to wonderful recreations of the poem —read by Jeremy Irons, Fiona Shaw, and the poet himself.

Here’s my humble rendition of the first poem in the cycle: “The Burial of the Dead.” I learned English from a combination of reading this book and watching the Hollywood B movies that were pirated and broadcasted by Cuban state-run TV.

I used to recite Eliot’s poetry as I walked the waste land of Havana, in the midst of blackouts, in the mid- and late-nineties.

This new reality of social distancing has made me revisit the poem under very different circumstances.

Alexis Romay