Did you know that T. S. Eliot wrote a poem entitled “The Triumph of Bullshit”? Neither did I until I started reading The Poems of T. S. Eliot, volume one (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the massive tome edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue in an heroic act of scholarly dedication. Of its 1311 pages, approximately nine hundred and sixty are devoted to commentary, and I cannot imagine a more meticulously annotated book of TSE’s greatest hits. I meant to review it nearer its pub date last December, but to do it justice would require forty seminar hours. The commentary and notes are immensely valuable. Eliot is no doubt the profoundest modern poet, and the one with the greatest lasting influence. And it is good to remind us, as the volume does, that in his younger days, Eliot had an irrepressible sense of humor that was gloriously incorrect. Consider “The Triumph of Bullshit,” one of tse-tse’s “scabrous exuberances,” in Ricks’s phrase. Here ’tis. — DL
Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward, insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles feebly versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotion that turn isiculous,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out “this stuff is too stiff for us”-
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannon fumiferous
Engines vaporous- all this will pass;
Quite innocent, -“he only wants to make shiver us.”
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.
And when thyself with silver foot shall pass
Among the theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ’s sake stick them up your ass.
Many believe that every good poem must be read at least twice. You can read this poem a second time here. — DL
from the archive; first posted November 8, 2019
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Author: The Best American Poetry
