I wish I
Vandals have tagged a library in Oakland with "I wish I were a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas" and attributed it to J. Alfred Prufrock.
They're damn right. Yes, they could have attributed it to the poet who wrote it, T.S. Eliot, but still, if they have had a bit of literary criticism they would indeed attribute it to J. Alfred Prufrock. He is after all the narrator of the poem.
L'auteur est mort. Remember. And intentional fallacy and all that (which is ironic: it is coined by the New Criticism of which Eliot was a member, if only he knew what is happening now ... I wonder what he'd say.): 'According to New Criticism, a poem does not belong to its author, but rather "it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it."'
So this article is just crap.
I don't see it as a mistake.
They're damn right. Yes, they could have attributed it to the poet who wrote it, T.S. Eliot, but still, if they have had a bit of literary criticism they would indeed attribute it to J. Alfred Prufrock. He is after all the narrator of the poem.
L'auteur est mort. Remember. And intentional fallacy and all that (which is ironic: it is coined by the New Criticism of which Eliot was a member, if only he knew what is happening now ... I wonder what he'd say.): 'According to New Criticism, a poem does not belong to its author, but rather "it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it."'
So this article is just crap.
I don't see it as a mistake.
Anyway. It is a brilliant poem.
- Update: it took them a few months, but still. They published something on The New Yorker Book Bench about it, where I originally found the article.
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