Kim has explored his poetry at length, but the single piece that has clung to me, stuck in my mind like a dirty shirt, is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", the monologue of an aging, dissatisfied man who has seen his hour of potential glory pass, a man who "could have been a contender". The truly unsettling part of the poem however, is the last stanza; beyond the nervous contemplation is a glimpse of a distant dream, an almost Coleridge-esque fantasia torn from a sleeping mind.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
I don't know why these haunting words stay with me... maybe it's because of the lack of consolation that they offer, the promise of a plunge into the abyss. Maybe I'm just an intellectual poseur, a 'groupie' trying to validate my identity and existance by appearing to have meaningful thoughts.
For some reason I really want to an Octopus-themed picture on this. That moment where Otto finally snaps-out of the spell he had been put under and asserts his responsibility, drowns his books....
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
..bweh. I need sleep.
long-lost pals and other wholly underappreciated folks
clubs wot I'm in









But I shouldn't really be posting about my thoughts on the poem
Kind of funny. "The Hollow Men" opens with a quote from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"... in Apocalypse Now, which was based on that novella, the insane colonel Kurtz recites "The Hollow Men" and other references to Eliot's somewhat nihilistic poetry are made.