I think that Moore's work relates each introduced topic in a very "stream of consciousness" way. So when you look at the poem, just skimming it, you may not understand how Moore got from point A to point B especially with all of the quotes that are thrown into the mix. But if you take the time to read the section in question carefully, you can kind of follow Moore's train of thought, so you might not see every connection but you can at least see the general path from point A to point B.
For Example Lines 75-81, the reader might be skimming along and ask the question "how does Moore get from talking about a 'Big Snow Mountain' to a 'nine-striped chipmunk'" this comparison does not make since if it is just read picking out only those phrases in connection to the two ideas about a mountain and an animal. But if you were to read the entire sentence, in this case only 1/2 of a sentence, you will see that the mountain is "a home of a diversity of creatures" such as the "nine-striped chipmunk" (summarized). Moore is able to include all of this to help us understand. But Eliot may have just said, there is a "Big Snow Mountain" the "nine striped chipmunk running...." with nothing in between the to phrases and ideas. When stated like that, we do not have as clear of an idea of why the poem is first talking about a mountain and then talking about a chipmunk.
I think that Moore's writing flows from one idea to the next, where as Eliot's ideas seem to jump around, unrelated to one another and unconnected. Moore's thought process is made clear but with Eliot it can be hard to see the connection (if you can see one at all) between 2 ideas. Both Eliot and Moore go from point A to point B but they do so in different ways, with different approaches.
Another way to put is would be that Eliot seems to leave out all of the middle stuff, the thought process, and just jumps from point to point, probably just assuming that you are following the same thought pattern as he is. But Moore includes all of the middle stuff, her entire thought process is presented to the reader so that we can make a connection between each idea given.
This is where I think students get confused. I think that because Moore includes all of this middle stuff, the students may be getting lost in all of the information, so they look back at Eliot's work and think that they would rather try to see the connections in his ideas than sort through Moore's thought process to find the connection that is given.
Another main difference between Moore's work and Eliot's work, is their structure. Moore has a very odd way of structuring her work, she kind of breaks all of the rules with structure. Moore's lines do not align with her sentences, and there are very few stanza breaks. But Eliot's work, although the sentencing is sometimes strange or incomplete, at least follows a "normal" structural pattern. His work has many line breaks and several stanza breaks, his work is even further separated into sections of ideas. This makes Eliot's work appear more organized and normal.
However I still find Moore's work easier to read than Eliot's work. Even though the structure is odd, I can see the connections between ideas in Moore's work and I can break it up into sentences to further understand the work. But with Eliot I still do not see many of the connections between his ideas, and I can't just take one sentence and analyze it, because there are very few complete sentences.
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I also find Moore's work a little easier to sort through than Elliot's. I find the way that Moore structures her poems is much less erratic than what we see in The Waste Land. In most of her poems, she does break up the text into well-defined stanzas, and even in An Octopus, she is at least consistent (although I agree that the big block of text can be harder to digest). It's harder to really know what Elliot is shooting for in his writing because not only does he change subjects/narrators/etc. every few lines, his structure also mutates rapidly.
I actually found Moore's work, well only "An Octupus" in particular, harder to read and comprehend than Eliot's "The Waste Land". In "The Waste Land", I didn't have too much trouble understanding what was going on in the context of the poem (note that this is completely different from actually understanding the purpose of this or that and how it all connects to each other), whereas I just found "The Octopus" terribly laborious to read both because of its physical construction and the fact that it seems to erratically change subjects without a hint let alone a break.In terms of insight into actual meaning, though, I would agree that Eliot takes the cake in obscurity.
I agree with what you have to say about the two poets' different writing styles, with one addition. Moore, like you said, includes explicit connections between her poems' ideas. Eliot also connects everything in his poems, however, just implicitly. For example, I'm sure if you analyzed all the allusions he makes to other texts, the connections would be contained within these works. Therefore, Eliot also connects his ideas, just not in the way inexperienced readers (like me) can understand.
I thought the point was that Moore leaves out every bit of her thought process; that is what makes her as incomprehensible as Williams says.
Moore complies a ton of images and leaves out all the high sounding interpretation; she states her thoughts on this pretty clearly in poetry. Eliot includes the interpretation, AND includes a ton of imagery, but at least he gives us a jumping-off point for discussions.
When I think about Eliot's work, I can at least think of something roughly intelligent to say about it, because he has thrown me a bone with all his references (tagged with slightly more intelligible notes than Moore, I might add).
I agree that Moore's work is more stream of consciousness. I see the imagery, and I think I might kind of get the conclusion (is there one? possibly..), but honestly, after reading "An Octopus" I looked almost fondly at "The Waste Land." It is much harder to follow her train of thought, because she worked so hard at removing as much of it as possible.
Initially, the works of Moore and Eliot were simply intimidating. I couldn't find rhyme scheme, a specific structure, or any kind of pattern. My experience with poetry has been one full of rules and patterns.
Its' been quite an experience so far in this class where some of the recent poems we have read seem more like short stories rather than poetry. Anyways, I'm happy that I am expanding my understanding of poetry.
After discussing the poems "The Waste Land" and "An Octopus" in class, I must say that "The Waste Land" is a little easier to read. "An Octopus," although full of references and a display of stream of consciousness, is a little too much for me. It seems more like a description rather than a story with a plot.
It seems like the major differences can be found in the purposes of the writings. "An Octopus" has a purpose of describing in detail a specific experience of Moore while "The Waste Land" holds the purpose to inform the audience of the destruction in our land. I see Eliot's more appealing because it provides me an opportunity to express my own opinion and thoughts.
I agree that Moore's work is easier to understand than Eliot's. Moore creates a path for us to follow from point A to point B even though that path may be hard to follow for many of us, but Eliot just completely puts out two points and leaves it to us to figure out their connection. But for their quotations, I think Eliot's is easier to understand. He manages to connect the meaning of the quote in some way to his poem itself, but Moore's quotes are from random brochures that leaves us wondering the importance of her quotes.
Like others, I also found Moore's work easier to comprehend than Eliot's work. Unlike Eliot who makes his point in a way that nobody comprehends it, Moore's poerty actually make sense (Not completely but more than Eliot's.) Moore does try to help the reader by allowing the reader to see what she is talking about, in a rather hard way, but atleast we get what she is talking about. Eliot on the other hand, even with all the discussion we had in class, was still hard to understand just because he seems so random, and it is hard to understand what he is talking about. He just leaves the reader hanging without explaining anything. So personally, Moore's poetry was easier to read and comprehend for me compared to The Wasteland.
ps. did anyone ever get a thought in their head that Moore could possibly be crazy? I did not. But I did get thoughts various times. So yeah. That was just my personal opinion.
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