House

This is our new house, same as the old house,
Where we once lived before moving away
Into the next house, the house before this house
Ran out of room for a family to stay.
We thought the next house might be the last house
To live out our days in an ambient way
But this is the next house after the last house,
Where we once lived before moving away.

We thought the last house might be the best house,
And it was nice for a year and a day:
It was a new house, a nothing-to-do house,
All we could want for the price we could pay,
And it was a big house, a two story tall house,
A dream house for those who like dreaming that way;
At least it was newer and bigger than this house,
And it was nice for a year and a day,

But we missed our old house, our used-to-be-cold house,
And found our way back to a place we can say:
      "A house that is old is a house that’s well settled,
      A house that is small can be comfortably warm,
      And the house that is ours at the end of the day
      Is the house we return to, the house we call home."
This is a good house, the house we remember.
We’ve found our way back to a place we can stay.


from Stillwater Symposia and Turning the Metaphor

A Novel Without a Hero: Trailer

“Maybe a story is better without any hero,” scrawled Ernest Hemingway in an early manuscript of The Sun Also Rises. He was well into a story in which his narrator, his omnipresent point of view, was a man who was made sexually dysfunctional from a war wound; at this point heroism, though it might have been difficult, still could have been reached by circumvention. But a line of thought had been running through Hemingway’s head and was already woven into the novel, and perhaps he already had in mind the epigraph to this thread: an opening passage from the book of Ecclesiastes... 

          "Listen, Jake. . . Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is

     going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve

     lived nearly half the time you have to live already?" 

          "Yes, every once in a while."
          "Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we’ll be dead?"
          "What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell?”
          "I’m serious."
          ”It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
          "You ought to."
          "I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or another. I’m through 

     worrying."

from March to December

Three Days In Summer: June 26, 1990

I had a good talk with Dan tonight. We will be all right. God will take care of us.

And I had a great talk with Rebekah Choi at University Bible Fellowship. 

[Footnote: The presence of University Bible Fellowship (UBF) at the University of Illinois at Chicago prompted a 1990 student newspaper editorial to call the organization an objectionable cult, but in the year I spent with UBF I did not find cause for concern. Its leaders promoted a protestant Christian theology with a focus on in-depth interactive bible study, encouraging students to devote as much time to studying the bible as they would to a college course with writing assignments, weekly meetings and homework. Weekly “sogams” were written, hymns were sung. I never cared for their three hour Sunday church services, preferring my Lutheran hour, but they still kept the weekday bible study door open for me.]

Rebekah told a wonderful story about "wanting to die." She was looking inward during a sufferable time of her life —recuperating from kidney stone surgery —and with the persuasion of a chance antagonist's scold ("Stop worrying!") she got religion, so to speak. She still felt painfully mortal, but she decided that as long as she was going to die she may as well die for Jesus. But after a while it became apparent to her that it wasn’t all smooth sailing, this dying for Jesus. For one thing, at the end of each day she still worried, and sometimes so much that she couldn’t sleep. During the day, she kept herself busy dying for Jesus by attending bible studies, going to church, reading; but during the night, with nothing else to do, she was reminded again of her pain and it kept her awake. Well, one day, she “went fishing” on the college campus, and she suddenly found herself with five new students to study the bible with. She put everything she had into building a fellowship with these new students, and before she knew it she found herself feeling exhausted at night. And it was wonderful.

There’s no way I can tell Rebekah’s story as well as she did; it was beautifully told by her because it was a personal testimony. But I hope the sense of what she said stays with me.

I also had a visit with Josh today. The hospital room was crowded, so it wasn’t too personal, but maybe that was for the best. I look forward to a brotherly talk tomorrow, though, so I can tell him about my conversations with Dan and Rebekah.

from March to December

Songs

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), Section III






          III. The Fire Sermon

                    Eliot reserved his discussion of The Fire Sermon, the source of the 
                    title to Section 3, until the section’s last lines, and he then immediately 
                    commingled this Buddhist lesson with the teachings of Jesus and the 
                    reflections of St Augustine (see notes at TWL 307, 308 and 309). With 
                    these pillars, the fire section will consider healing by a purging of 
                    emotions. Some have speculated at what the poet wanted to personally 
                    purge, but revealing this was probably not his intent. See Eliot, 
                    Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919): 

                    Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; 
                    it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. 
                    ...There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere 
                    emotion in verse, ...But very few know when there is expression of 
                    significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in 
                    the history of the poet.  The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet 
                    cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to 
                    the work to be done.  

                    In the process of surrender, the dying words of the last “air” section evolve 
                    into a series of SONGS. Songs are played outside of Section 3, at TWL 31 
                    (the sailor’s song), TWL 128 (Hamlet’s rag) and note, TWL 172 (Ophelia’s
                    Valentine song ), and later at TWL 331-359 (the water-dripping song),
                    note, TWL 367 (Dmitri’s drunken hymn) and TWL 379 (the fiddled whisper 
                    music), but we hear the greater concentration of songs within this fire 
                    section, at TWL 176 and 183 (a song to Sweet Thames); note, TWL 182 
                    (by allusion, the Lord’s song in a strange land); TWL 197 (horns and 
                    motors); TWL 199-201 (the soldiers’ ballad); TWL 202 (children’s voices 
                    in the dome); TWL 203-206 (the nightingale’s song); note, TWL 253 (again 
                    by allusion, Olivia’s song); TWL 256 (the lovely woman’s record on the 
                    gramophone); TWL 257 (Ariel’s song, with music that crept upon the 
                    waters); note, TWL 258 (by allusion, the graduates’ Strand song); TWL 
                    261 (the pleasant whining of a mandolin); and, finally and emphatically, 
                    TWL 261-306 (the song of the three Thames-daughters).


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Three Days In Summer: June 25, 1990

Why doesn’t Steve Sullivan want to talk about God? I know, that’s a foolish question. But Steve is one of several bible belt fundamentalists who work with me at Maxrad. We went to dinner tonight at the end of our shift, and, being hungry for a discussion of faith, I looked forward to Steve bringing up God, and he didn’t. Maybe he’s not as much of a Christian as I had thought.

But here’s another question: Why doesn’t Jon Vold want to talk about God? Now that is a question I would do better to consider: I should realize that there is no good answer I can conclude with Steve as long as I cannot confess the answer for myself.

And really, the answer to Steve’s question, the question about Steve, is irrelevant, because if I even get close to the point where I can be rightly concerned about someone else’s conversational faith I would have to be talking about God all the time; if I were ever quiet about God, I would have no cause to judge others for being quiet; and if I was talking about God all the time, I would never have time to wonder why anyone having dinner with me was talking about anything else. I would be forever steering the conversation back to God, and we would be talking about God from dusk to dawn, and I wouldn’t let anyone get a secular word in edgewise.

I am not that way, though. God knows I don’t even try to be. I might have a million answers to why Jon Vold doesn’t talk about God and not one answer is a good one: “I’m ashamed,” “I’m afraid,” “I want to talk about something else right now,” “I don’t know what to say,” and so on.

I am a sinner, Lord, perpetually falling short. I’ll use every excuse a million more times, and still I will come to you for forgiveness. You give it to me every time, too, and why I don’t talk about that to everyone I cannot say. All I can do, it seems, is ask for that forgiveness one more pitiful time. 

from March to December

Three Days In Summer: June 24, 1990

On a Sunday morning, amidst my sins and thoughts and actions, amidst my shame and self-pity... I don’t know. Maybe there’s a bible verse, and maybe it will pop out at me by chance.

“Yahweh is all I have, I say to myself... It is good to wait in silence for Yahweh to save... to sit in solitude and silence when it weighs heavy, to lay one’s head in the dust —maybe there is hope... Yahweh, I called your name from the deep pit. You heard my voice... You are near when I call to you. You said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” (Lamentations 3:24a, 26, 28, 29, 55, 56a, 57)

“...Take off your dress of sorrow and distress, put on the beauty of God’s glory, wrap the cloak of God’s saving justice around you.” (Barach 5: 1, 2a).

“The whole world will remember and return to Yahweh, all the families of nations bow down before him. For to Yahweh, ruler of the nations, belongs kingly power! All who prosper on earth will bow before him, all who go down to the dust will do reverence before him. And those who are dead, their descendants will serve him, will proclaim his name to the generations still to come; and these will tell of his saving justice to a people yet unborn...” Psalm 22: 27-31a.


from March to December

Moleskin 3.7

How nice it might have been to keep the curtains drawn, to deliver the papers without having to read them; how sweet, to never have to move beyond the banks of a gentle stream —still a powerful stream, bigger than a child’s wild imagination, yet gentle all the same; how great it would be, to stay this age forever! For all that was spinning around me —my parents’ barely mentioned divorce and downplayed poverty, the reality of suddenly having to make new friends and forge new adventures, not to mention that big world starting to show from behind the curtain —it was a perfect time, being a sixth grader, being the oldest of three, being duly employed in the big city, being able to play Huck Finn with friends, being a traveler through seventeen states, being a Cubs fan, a Scrabble player, a preacher’s kid, the son of an English teacher —in a word, being alive— and yes, just beginning to be one who liked to read the papers.

Sonnet # 44

Picking up where we once left off,
     as though the last twenty five years
     weren’t amazingly full of rich, rich stories,
every season a lifetime unto itself,
     every hour brimming with possibilities
—I could tell you a hundred of them,
     a thousand if you had the time— 
but where were we? Twenty five years ago,
before we set off on our unexpected
     adventures, and who were we then,
before the news... You were twelve,
     you were twenty two, I was twenty six,
and you: you were still in your teens,
not even thinking of all the world had
     in store for you, even in the whisper of
     a day. But rest now. We’ll talk more tomorrow.

—but I like all those stories of in-between,
I want to hold on to them, making sure
     they don’t slip away or change into something
unrecognizable, forgettable. And you,
     encouraging me with your eyes, your smile,
     could almost make me forget the bookends.
Remember when? I could muster
     a thousand smiles and turn around
     to look at them a hundred times more:
Life, after all, is all about reliving,
and where we were once, and where
     we are now, is only about forgiving.


from Stillwater Symposia

The Fifth Stage Speaking to the Fourth Stage

The Fifth Stage (feeling like the Sixth Stage)
Speaking to the Fourth Stage (reminding him of what he learned in the Second Stage)

“I feel so old, having to be
helped with walking short distances,
the world ever holding my hand
and the room being a constant adventure.”

Old? I’m your older brother; let me be
the voice of wisdom through childish treble
with my pant legs rolled up: dignity
be damned, we walk as we are able.

You are a soldier, reminding me
even now like a bearded pard
of what you’ve told me repeatedly
over the years and across the ages,

“Every day is a gift,
and we are all survivors.”


from Stillwater Symposia

End of Spring

The end of spring’s beginning never fails
to bode a mournful middle, even as
the grass seems greener than it ever has
been, flowers are in fullest bloom and sails
are carrying the winds of summer across
the bay: it always takes me by surprise
to finish rubbing winter from my eyes
and rudely find the unexpected loss
     of innocence that comes and goes too soon.

My spring has sprung and all the birds have flown
away.  My spring has sprung and all that was
awakening begins to settle down,
and even as the warmer dawns of June
exhilarate, I hesitate, because,
as morning dews of May dry with the sun,
     my innocence, by the toll of noon, is gone.

Now middle age begins, yet I feel young
and ready as I ever will be to
leave spring behind and shake away the dew
that never satisfied me.  Spring, if sprung,
be damned: the summer’s beckoning me now
and I’ve got vernal promises to break
and miles to go before I let sleep take
me; that will be a cold night anyhow
     when the ghosts of innocence steal me away.

My spring has sprung; all memories of birth-
days celebrated have blown out their fires.
June’s been stuck on the wall for months and months,
mocking the paper trails of time and youth.
I’m never home; it’s not home anymore;
I’ve gone away for summer, for all it’s worth,
     forgetting spring, refraining innocence.

from Calendrums

Lil and Albert and the Pub Farewells

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 139-172 







          When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said —

                    To be demobbed, or demobilized, is to be discharged from military service. 

          I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,

                    According to T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, a Facsimile & Transcript of 
                    the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, edited 
                    and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot (1971), this story was related 
                    to the Eliots by their maid.

          Hurry up please its time

                    “Hurry up please its time,” stated five times in this passage, is a common 
                    last call in English pubs. Compare this, and the  concurrent advice being 
                    given to Lil, to the urgent “carpe diem” call of Andrew Marvell, To His 
                    Coy Mistress (1681): 

                    Had we but world enough and time,

                    So the mistress’s lover begins, but he quickly concludes that they don’t. 
                    See Eliot, Andrew Marvel (Times Literary Supplement, 03/31/1921), 
                    finding in Marvel’s Coy Mistress

                    an alliance of wit and seriousness (by which the seriousness is  intensified).

                    Several more Coy Mistress allusions appear in this poem (see TWL 185 and
                    196), but none are as prevalent as the counterpoints in Eliot, The Love Song 
                    of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), with its own five repetitions of a less frantic mantra: 

                    There will be time.

                    For more of this counterpace, compare the similar setting of TWL 260 and 
                    the poet’s unexpected appreciation for the music sometimes heard “beside 
                    a public bar.” 

          Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
          He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
          To get herself some teeth.  He did, I was there.
          You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,

                    See Jesus ben Sira, Alphabeta (ca.AD 700-900; tr. M. Stein-schneider, 1858):

                    When the Almighty - may His name be praised - created the first, solitary man, 
                    He said: It is not good for man to be alone. And he fashioned for man a woman from 
                    the earth, like him, and called her Lilith. Soon, they began to quarrel with each other. 
                    She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but 
                    above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above. She said to him: We are 
                    both equal, because we are both created from the earth. But they didn’t listen to each 
                    other. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air. 
                    ...Immediately, the Almighty - may his name be praised - said to him: If she decides to 
                    return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a 
                    hundred of her children die each day.

                    For a biblical reference to Lilith in the wilderness, see Isaiah 34:9-14 (Darby, 
                    1890): 

                    And the torrents thereof shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone; yea,
                     the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day; 
                    the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; 
                    ...And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste, and the plummets of emptiness. 
                    ...And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her fortresses;
                    and it shall be a dwelling-place of wild dogs, a court for ostriches. And there 
                    shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall 
                    cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.

          He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
          And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
          He's been in the army for four years, he wants a good time,
          And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
          Oh is there, she said.  Something o' that, I said.
          Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
          Hurry up please its time
          If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
          Others can pick and choose if you can't.
          But if Albert makes off, it won't be for a lack of telling.
          You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
          (And her only thirty-one.)
          I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
          It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.

                    To bring it off is to have an abortion. 

          (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
          The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same.

                    The chemist is a pharmacist

          You are a proper fool, I said.
          Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
          What you get married for if you don't want children?
          Hurry up please its time
          Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

                    Gammon is smoked ham; it also suggests a slang term for sexual
                    intercourse.

          And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot — 

                    One of Eliot’s more notorious flaws was a streak of ANTI-SEMITISM, and 
                    the ugly head rears again as the Lil story first alludes to the outspoken Lilith 
                    from Jewish folk literature then concludes with a vulgar pork meal.  The 
                    absence of any further recurrence of this flaw in The Waste Land is thanks in 
                    part to Ezra Pound’s editing (see The Wasteland Facsimile, above).  A 
                    preliminary draft had contained a reference to a Jewish slur from one of Eliot’s 
                    earlier poems, Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar (1920), in 
                    which Eliot had written 

                    The rats are underneath the piles.
                    The jew is underneath the lot.
                    Money in furs.

                    Eliot reinserted Bleistein into The Waste Land with yet another reference to 
                    Ariel’s song (see notes at TWL 48):

                    Full fathom five your Bleistein lies
                    Under the flatfish and the squids,

                    but Pound prevailed in having these lines deleted. 

          Hurry up please its time
          Hurry up please its time
          Goonight Bill.  Goonight Lou.  Goonight May.  Goonight.
          Ta ta.  Goonight.  Goonight.
          Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

                    See William Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.70-73 (1605):

                    OPHELIA

                    And so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my coach! 
                    Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night.  

                    These are some of Ophelia’s last words, if not her final words, and thus ends 
                    the air section.  Ophelia has a few more lines in the play, but already she has 
                    lost her mind and the air about her is dying.  Her words, mourning her father’s 
                    death at the hands of Hamlet, become fragmentary and nonsensical as she 
                    wanders off, and soon it will be reported that she had fallen into shallow 
                    waters and drowned.  For the particulars of Ophelia’s demise, see Hamlet 
                    4.7.164-181: 

                    QUEEN

                    There is a willow grows askant the brook
                    That shows his hoary leaves in the glassy stream.
                    Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
                    Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
                    That liberal shepherds give a grosser name
                    But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
                    There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
                    Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
                    When down her weedy trophies and herself
                    Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide
                    And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up.
                    ...But long it could not be
                    Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
                    Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
                    To muddy death.  

                    Compare Ophelia’s DEATH BY WATER, further alluded to by TWL 
                    173-174 in the next section (“The river's tent is broken; the last fingers 
                    of leaf / Clutch and sink into the wet bank”), with the hyacinth girl’s 
                    demise at TWL 38 (“Your arms full, and your hair wet”) and the shallow 
                    water death of Bavarian King Ludwig II (alluded to at TWL 8). See also 
                    the collected currants in the merchant’s pocket (see TWL 210) and the 
                    watery deaths of Jean Verdinal (note at TWL 42), the Tempest sailor 
                    (TWL 48), and, in the section entitled “Death by Water,” Phlebas the 
                    Phoenician (TWL  312-321).  Finally, note the simile of Cleopatra’s 
                    perfumes that “drowned the sense in odours” (TWL 89). 


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

gray

if you could read my mind it would be gray
i mean to say
                    the color of a stone
without distinction neither right no wrong
without apology no will no wont
be coming home tonight
                               how was your day
you said i said its funny but i dont
remember much about the black or white
of it the colors turn to monotone
and the lines begin to fade
                                  away
i find myself with nothing more to say
and nowhere else to go the day
                                           is done
and i am going home to you tonight
instead of going off somewhere alone
to lose myself in my private shades
                                           of gray


from Calendrums

Ramadan

The rock behind the rock we're on
was hidden from our point of view
until it caught the setting sun
and nothing but a sliver to
paint shadows on our faces and
give us a dusky hint of who
we are at night:  we're all the same,
imperfect sinners turning to
the stars, a cross, a crescent moon
and taking time for penance: you
have Lent and we have Ramadan
and each of us is hoping to
make it to heaven somehow and
get through life on this rock we're on.

I don't pretend to understand
the purpose of the fasting or
the reason we should watch the moon.
I guess it meant something before
they called it Lent or Ramadan,
before we rested faith upon
the Prophet's revelations or
the resurrection of the Son,
but this is what we're looking for:
salvation past the ceremonies,
focus in our daily worship,
sustenance beyond the sunset,
anything to make us more
at peace and not at odds upon
this hot, dry dessert rock we're on.

from Stillwater Symposia

Moleskin 3.6

In 1974 the world started creeping in. This was the year Nixon resigned, right after the Tribune published the Watergate tapes. I had apparently lived a sheltered life up to this point, rarely if ever hearing people use “expletive deleted” in their conversations, and suddenly here was the president for all the world to read, absolutely full of it. Prior to this, for all the craziness going on in our country in those days, I only seemed to notice the upbeat news: watching the first moonlanding at Hank and Vi’s Minnesota cottage, for instance, or sharing Dad’s late interest in the Beatles. Even when he went out and bought John Lennon’s Imagine, I heard none of the blue chords, only the harmonies. Even Give Me Some Truth was a cool sort of anger. But then came Tricky Dick, daring me to take a peek behind the curtain.

Passing Storm

Great storms 
are not the final storms 
no more than sweet calms 
are the ever after; 
any more my faith turns 
toward eternity, 
trying so hard to see 
around the bend.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth, something woven in
To every calm and storm.

This time 
won’t be the only time,
neither the first rhyme 
nor the closing chapter,
more and more I move to 
the perpetuity
of things that never change 
and never end.

Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
The more I move the less I know, but 
Truth, where I want to go,
Is with me all the time.

I AM
as certain as the journey journeys on,
each setting sun returns to where it rose,
each river flows into a timeless sea
and endlessly the wind replenishes.

I AM
as certain as the ground I stand upon
a fire within me burns eternally
and living water pulses through my veins
and hope, the spirit in my soul, remains.

This storm 
may be a passing storm,
but let the rains come
and let me feel the thunder
and let its music be 
part of the symphony
of where I’m going to 
and where I’ve been.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth: it's where I want to go.


from Turning the Metaphor

Chasing Wind

The walls shake with anger.
The wind wakes the dead, stirs
the sleeping, makes it difficult to dream.
The world’s moment blows against
This house: letting be known
What is so frequently forgotten:
We stand at the whim of nature
And we breathe as the wind allows.


from Turning the Metaphor

A Cast of Characters

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), line 111






          “My nerves are bad to-night.  Yes, bad.  Stay with me...”

                    This is the fifth directly quoted passage of The Waste Land, after THE SYBIL’s 
                    wish to die (TWL Epigraph), THE HYACINTH GIRL remembering how she 
                    was named (TWL 35-36), THE POET calling out to his reader STETSON (TWL 
                    69-76), and THE NIGHTINGALE’s inviolable cry (TWL 103, and see TWL 
                    203-206).  Only three more direct quotes will follow: single lines from THE 
                    LOVELY WOMAN (TWL 252) and the Tempest’s ARIEL (TWL 257), then the 
                    songs of THE THREE THAMES DAUGHTERS (TWL 292-305).

                    With a total of fourteen lines (TWL 111-14, 117, 119, 121-123, 126, 131-134), 
                    THE NERVOUS SPEAKER has the most extended of the quoted passages, and 
                    it is interspersed, sans quotation marks, by the responsive dialogue of THE 
                    SPEAKER’S COMPANION.  The two speakers hear one another, so the lack 
                    of quotations of the companion appears to be simply a means to distinguish them.  
                    This also happens, though without interactive dialogue, after the Hyacinth Girl 
                    speaks (TWL 37-41), and the two passages are even related: “I knew nothing,” 
                    says the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent (TWL 40); “Do you know nothing?” the 
                    nervous speaker retorts (TWL 121-122); the Hyacinth Girl’s respondent observes 
                    “your hair wet” (TWL 37) while the nervous speaker mentions going outside with 
                    her hair down (TWL 133), after which her companion considers that it might rain 
                    (TWL 136).

                    Separately, several other characters appear without quotation marks, often in 
                    pairs: before this, MARIE and a GERMAN COFFEE DRINKER (TWL 5-18), a 
                    PROPHET speaking to THE SON OF MAN (TWL 19-30), a VIGILANT SAILOR 
                    (TWL 31-34, 42), MADAME SOSOSTRIS (TWL 46-59); after this, LIL and a 
                    BARTENDER (TWL 139-172) and the blind TIRESIUS (TWL 215-248), endured 
                    by the Lovely Woman. 

                    Beyond these, there are no clearly distinguishable speeches in the poem, though 
                    myriad other voices, or “fragments,” as the Poet suggests (TWL 431), can be
                    heard within the flow of musings and allusions.  One could cast these fragments 
                    as separate characters, but really they are more reflections of either the Poet, 
                    e.g., THE FISHER KING (TWL 182-202 and 424-426), or the city around him: 
                    e.g, BABY-FACED BATS (TWL 380-385)

                    There are also at least six prominent characters in the poem who do not speak: the 
                    spoken to Stetson (TWL 69-76), the Cleopatra-like QUEEN (TWL 77-110), MR. 
                    EUGENIDES (TWL 207-214), PHLEBAS THE PHOENICIAN (TWL 312-321), 
                    THE WALKING COMPANION (TWL 360-366) and a BLACK-HAIRED
                     WOMAN (TWL 378-385).

                    So who is the nervous speaker?  There are ambiguities tying all the characters
                    together throughout the poem, and here it is no different: by the context of dialog, 
                    the nervous speaker would seem to be the Hyacinth Girl or the walking 
                    companion; by appearance she might be the lovely woman or the black-haired         
                    woman; by her melancholy she could be the Sybil or the nightingale or one of 
                    the Thames daughters; by her spouse-like behavior she could be Lil or the 
                    queen or, with an external reference, Eliot’s wife Vivienne.  Perhaps most 
                    conclusively, within the continual stream of fragments she, or he, would seem to 
                    be an extension of the Poet himself.


                    from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)