The Use of Common Speech

Abstract

‘Every revolution in poetry is apt to be… a return to common speech’, said Eliot.¹ The revolution in twentieth-century poetry with which Eliot was so closely involved was no exception to this generalisation. In fact, one of the most immediately noticeable differences between twentieth-century poetry and most poetry of the nineteenth century is the modern emphasis on common diction. For readers accustomed to the diction of Tennyson — ‘Dost thou look back on what hath been’ (In Memoriam, LXIV) — Eliot’s poetry might have seemed more like prose:

we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

(The Waste Land , 1, 9–11)