A Poem by a Poem about a Poem

Brooks believes that all poems are on some level about poetry. In Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" the poetic speaker can be read himself as the personification of poetry.

Before leading the reader through his lines, or "streets that follow like a tedious argument," the speaker warns against the heresy of paraphrase. "Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit." The couplet calls to mind Brooks' comparison of poetry and drama: both are "something which arrives at its conclusion through conflict." The conflict can be found in the "hundred visions and revisions" that there is time for over the course of reading the poem.

Certain lines also read as the poetic speaker's concerns regarding being misread. When he presents himself with a bald spot in the middle of his head, "They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!'" The literal or paraphrastic reading of the bald spot misses entirely the reason for its inclusion in the first place. Hence the speaker's trepidation when he is fixed "in a formulated phrase" by the eyes of his readers -- "When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, / Then how should I begin." Whatever meaning he intended himself to possess has passed out of his hands and into those of his readers. This brings us back to a central concern when composing poetry and also the factor that necessitates all of the paradox and conflict of poems: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!"