information:highlighting
Style

"A Game of Chess", lines 117–130

The style of the poem is marked by the many intertextual allusions and quotations that Eliot included, and their juxtaposition. In addition to the many " highbrow " references and quotations from poets such as Baudelaire, Dante, Ovid, and Homer, he included several references to " lowbrow " genres, such as an allusion to the 1912 popular song "That Shakespearian Rag" by Gene Buck, Herman Ruby and Dave Stamper. The poem contrasts such elements throughout: "Ornate vocabulary gives way to colloquial dialogue, lyrical moments are interrupted by sordid intrusions, the comic and the macabre coexist with the solemn words of religious instruction, one language is supplanted by another, until in the final lines of the poem the fragments are collected together."

The Waste Land is notable for its seemingly disjointed structure, employing a wide variety of voices which are presented sometimes in monologue, dialogue, or with more than two characters speaking. The poem jumps from one voice or image to another without clearly delineating these shifts for the reader, creating the paradoxical effect of a poem which contains deeply personal subject matter being simultaneously an impersonal collage. As Eliot explained in his 1919 essay " Tradition and the Individual Talent ", he saw the ideal poet as a conduit who creates a piece of art that reflects culture and society, as well as their own perspective and experiences, in an impersonal and craftsmanlike way.

The poem plays with traditional forms of metre and rhyme, often implying blank verse without strictly committing to it (especially through quotations of works that are themselves written in such a metre). Lines are often fragmented, and verses are generally of unequal length, although there are instances of regularity — for example, the first two verses of "The Fire Sermon" are formed like Petrarchan sonnets. During the editing process, Pound would highlight lines that were "too penty" (i.e. too close to iambic pentameter), prompting them to be changed to less regular rhythms. Eliot disliked the term " free verse ", however, believing it impossible to write verse that is truly "free".