There's something about introducing the concrete into a poem that is very potent I think.
Mary Woolnoth. Cannon st hotel. Lower Thames street. Greenwich reach.
I thought at first you meant literal concrete but you mean the real, specific, located?
I think what makes the wasteland difficult for many is the shift between layers of reality (the concrete of London vs the stone of the wasteland), allusion, imagination - and voice. Often without warning, abruptly, violently or just bemusingly.
I suppose the idea is that all this activity is covering up a desert waste. Which is a bleak view.
Yeah but may be now in the era of sampling, channel hopping, multiple tabs open on your browser, following link after link on a Wikipedia binge, this makes more sense to us?
Coil had this thing that they were not the creators of their music but merely conduits of stuff hanging round in the ether. You've just got to keep your antennae open, they said, and it comes.
I get a similar feeling reading the snatches and splurges of speech in the wasteland.
As Luka said we're in the wasteland (the world wide waste land) - including us (would be) "intellectuals" with scraps of knowledge to hand and no clear path to making use of it. Nobody has a clear path actually.
I suppose the idea is that all this activity is covering up a desert waste. Which is a bleak view.
"Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass..."