Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Frank Skinner's Poetry

podcast in my left hand. I hold a copy of T.S. Elliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and that is the poem I will be discussing today.

It was first published in June 1915

and is actually T.S. Elliot's first professionally published poem. Now, many of you will have heard of T.S.

Elyat, I'm sure, and perhaps the first poem that springs to mind where Elliot is mentioned is Epic The Wasteland.

And some people use the love song of J Alfred proof rock today's poem as a sort of gateway drug to the

wasteland the shorter perhaps slightly more accessible poem which operates as a ramp to the great epic.

I think that is misusing the love song of J. Alfred Pruf it's brilliant in its own right and I if I

had to be pushed on it I probably love it more than the wasteland it's like if you ever watched any of those old 70 sitcoms like On the Buses,

when they became successful they would do a film version which would be like 90 minutes of on the buses

par example holiday on the buses which was one of those films and they were never as good as the original 25 minute sitcoms I have to say

on the bosses didn't give a lot to live up to in many ways but they were padded out a bit and

they didn't have the tight precision of the original so I think in many ways the wasteland is

holiday on the buses to the love song of J Alfred proof rocks original

25 minute sitcom on the buses.

That is an analogy which half way through I thought,

can I really enforce this?

I can, and I it the love song of J Alfred

proof rock I'm just gonna call it proof rock although before I do that pruning, as you see I, before I do that, let's just look at that title,

the love song of those first four words you think oh this is going to be high

Romance the love song of it's gonna be be lyrical it's going to be beautiful and then you get

J Alfred proof rock it sounds the most normal, like normal with a capital N name.

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