Isn't this how a lot of people who read "The Waste Land" for the first time react to it? I'm reading Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley at the moment, and he writ

Isn't this how a lot of people who read "The Waste Land" for the first time react to it? I'm reading Exile's Return by Malcolm Cowley at the moment, and he writes about the reaction of the generation of younger writers watching Eliot's progress as a potential way forward for them, and being disappointed that with this poem he zigged when they hoped he would zag, so to speak. Doesn't matter to me, I really like it. It's dense and allusive, but a lot of poetry is hard to read without seeming to have much to back it up. This one, I never put down, because it feels like even the parts I don't get have a reason for being that way.