What is an eco-poetic reading of TS Eliot, “The Waste Land”? In this discussion of Eliot's poem, I will examine the content through the lens of eco-poetics. poetic. Ecopoetics is a literary theory that favors the rhizomatic approach to the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will constitute the overall structure of this essay. First, rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of the significant motifs in “The Waste Land”. Second, they grow and spread, through experimentation in a context. This will be reflected in the study of voice and language with which the poem opens. Third, rhizomes grow and spread independently of breaks. This will allow an eco-poetic reading of the last eight lines of the poem. Fourth, rhizomes grow via underground networks, which provides a framework for studying reference and allusion in the poem. Aware that this already seems prescriptive and therefore contrary to the spirit of what Deleuze and Guattari propose in their rhizomatic approach, I will use, fifthly, the definition of a rhizome to try to capture what is relevant even if it is elusive in this approach: a lack of stasis. A rhizome can sprout roots or shoots from any part of its surface, suggesting the unpredictable connections, variations, and expansions possible in poetry read rhizomatically. First, rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. I will begin in the middle of the poem, in the third part, “The Fire Sermon,” of a 5-part poem and examine the theme of landscape. Eliot opens “The Fire Sermon” with a description of a desolate scene by a river. The earth is “brown” and, strangely, the wind is “inaudible”. The fisherman threw his line into a,'d...... middle of paper... alone, 'the other figures there are/simply projections.' And you consider the richness of this "someone's" imagination, their isolation and alienation and possible nervous breakdown and it makes you think about the conditions that brought this about. There are those who claim in reference to "The Waste Land", "that the mere fineness of the details constitutes a direction", or that it is a "watermark without pattern", these two quotations suggesting to the reader what the formalists claimed, namely that it has value for its form. Eliot himself eventually called his poem a “rhythmic grumble.” Either way, it's certainly more than the sum of its parts. And no more than wildly expanding rhizomes, it feels like "The Waste Land" is like you're on the verge of finding meaning when it expands again in your grip..