PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

ON A SUNNY DAY

EVERYTHING IS BRIGHT

WHATELSE CAN I SAY

FILLS ME WITH DELIGHT

HOPE THAT IT WILL STAY

NOT A CLOUD IN SIGHT

EVERYTHING'S OK

WHEN IT'S FILLED WITH LIGHT

ONCE UPON A SHATTERED DREAM

DIDN'T CARE OR SO IT SEEMED

SHE APPEARED SO NONCHALANT

DIDN'T REALLY WANT A LOT

SEARCHED INSTEAD FOR SOMETHING ELSE

GOT HER MIND OFF OF HERSELF

THEY SAY SEEK AND YOU WILL FIND

YOU'RE ALLOWED TO CHANGE YOUR MIND

MANY THINGS MAY CROSS YOUR PATH

DREAMS COME TRUE REMAIN STEADFAST

Click to Link to poem

 

 

Measuring a Life in Coffee Spoons: A Neurodivergent (Re)Reading of T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'

 

Introduction: Finding Myself in Prufrock's Paralysis

Have you ever felt trapped between the desire to connect and the paralysing fear of being truly seen? When I first encountered T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), it was more than literature—it was a mirror. But not for who I am now, and some might argue, not for who I was then. One thing is for sure, as my teacher read it, I was forever in love with poetry. As a queer, disabled, neurodivergent educator, I found in Prufrock's voice an echo of my own struggles with masking, social anxiety, and the exhausting performance of fitting in.

This analysis is part of reclaiming my literary voice after years of others profiting from my work. If you're new to Sonnet Sleuths, welcome to a community where poetry becomes a lens for understanding ourselves and our world through diverse perspectives.

 

Quick Summary: What You Need to Know

 

• Form: Dramatic monologue disguised as a love song
• Core Themes: Social paralysis, masking, failed connection, time anxiety
• Why It Matters: Speaks to neurodivergent experiences, gender performance, and modern social anxiety
• Key Innovation: Birth of modernist poetry through fragmentation and stream-of-consciousness
• 
  

 

Prufrock's World: The Architecture of Anxiety

 

The poem opens with an epigraph from Dante's Inferno, a soul in Hell speaks only because they believe their confession will never reach the living world. This establishes Prufrock's defining need: a witness who won't judge or expose him.

 

 

The urban landscape mirrors his internal state:

 

• "muttering retreats"
• "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels"
• "streets that follow like a tedious argument"

 

These aren't just descriptions—they're what Eliot called "objective correlatives," external images that embody internal emotional states. For those of us who experience sensory overwhelm or social exhaustion, these environments feel viscerally familiar.

 

The Yellow Fog: Paralysis Made Visible

 

 

The yellow fog, personified as a timid cat, becomes the poem's most powerful metaphor:

"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes...
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening...
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep."

This isn't dramatic weather, it's quiet suffocation. Like Prufrock himself, the fog is everywhere yet passive, moving without purpose. For neurodivergent readers, this perfectly captures the fog of executive dysfunction or social overwhelm that keeps us from action despite a desperate desire to connect.

 

 

The Performance of Self: Masking and Gender

 

 

"Preparing a Face": The Exhaustion of Masking

 

Prufrock's need "to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet" resonates deeply with masking, the exhausting performance many neurodivergent and queer people know intimately. Every social interaction requires careful calibration:

 

"There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate"

 

The violence of "murder and create" reveals how masking feels, killing parts of ourselves to create acceptable versions for public consumption.

 

 

Fragmented Perception: When Connection Feels Impossible

 

Prufrock cannot perceive women as whole people, seeing only:

 

• "perfume from a dress"
• "arms that are braceleted and white and bare"
• "the skirts that trail along the floor"

 

 

This fragmentation reveals more than misogyny; it shows how overwhelming social interaction can fragment our perception when we're struggling to process human connection. From a feminist lens, it also exposes how patriarchal conditioning reduces women to parts, even in supposedly sensitive men.

 

 

"Not Prince Hamlet": Impostor Syndrome and Secondary Status

 

Prufrock's self-comparison devastates:

 

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord... Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse"

 

 

He casts himself as Polonius—not the tragic hero but the expendable supporting character. For those of us who have internalised messages about being "too much" or "not enough,"  this resignation to secondary status in our own lives cuts deep.

 

 

 

Time, Routine, and the Unlived Life

 

Coffee Spoons and Crushing Routine

 

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

 

This single line crystallises the tragedy — existence reduced to safe repetition rather than authentic experience. The contrast between abundant time ("there will be time") and urgent scarcity reveals the paralysis of chronic procrastination, particularly familiar to individuals with ADHD, who are often caught between hyperfocus and time blindness.

 

 

The Overwhelming Question Never Asked

Throughout, Prufrock circles an "overwhelming question" he cannot voice. Whether read as a romantic proposition, an existential query, or the question of authentic self-revelation, its very unaskability defines his tragedy.

 

 

 

Contemporary Resonance: Prufrock in Digital Spaces

 

Social Media as Modern Drawing Room

 

Prufrock's anxieties feel prescient in our digital age:

• His "bald spot" and "thin" limbs anticipate selfie culture's body scrutiny
• "Visions and revisions" mirror the endless editing of online personas
• The women "talking of Michelangelo" become LinkedIn influencers performing intelligence

Yet online spaces also offer what Prufrock couldn't find—niche communities where difference is celebrated, where we might hear the mermaids sing to us after all.

 

 

 

Intersectional Readings: Beyond Universal Anxiety

 

 

Queer Coding and Hidden Selves

 

 

LGBTQIA+ readers recognise the coded language of concealment. Prufrock’s terror of being “formulated, sprawling on a pin” speaks to the violence of being outed or exposed. His conviction that “I do not think they will sing to me” echoes the generational trauma of exclusion from love and beauty.

 

Poetry, Music, and the Power of Naming

 

 

My own journey toward understanding my gender and neurodivergence was shaped not only by poetry but by music. For years, I masked my difference to survive, until I heard the lyrics from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s “Pa’lante” in 2017:

 

 

“Well lately, don’t understand what I am
Treated as a fool
Not quite a woman or a man
Well I don’t know
I guess I don’t understand the plan”

 

 

These words gave me the clarity and permission I needed to embrace my nonbinary, pansexual, and asexual identity. Like Eliot’s verse, today’s music is living poetry, offering language, validation, and solidarity for those of us whose stories are rarely told.

 

 

Class, Race, and the Limits of Universality

 

 

 

While often seen as universal, Prufrock’s anxiety is actually specific — he moves through privileged spaces (such as tea parties and cultural references) even though he feels excluded. Contemporary analysis must consider whose anxieties are canonised as “universal” and whose are marginalised. Some critics claim that Prufrock’s anxieties are universal, while others view them as tied to his social class, gender, or sexual orientation. Feminist and queer perspectives complicate the notion of universality, revealing how the poem both reflects and challenges the limitations of early twentieth-century masculinity. Recognising these debates, we understand Prufrock not as a simple figure but as a lens for exploring broader issues of identity, power, and belonging.

 

 

Literary Innovation: Fragmenting the Modern Self

 

 

Eliot’s techniques revolutionised poetry:

 

• Stream of consciousness captures anxious thought patterns
• Irregular rhyme mirrors psychological instability
• Dense allusion creates cultural exhaustion
• Fragmentation reflects the modern self’s disintegration

 

 

These innovations provided us with language to describe experiences that Victorian poetry couldn’t capture — the fractured, overwhelming nature of modern consciousness.

 

 

Personal Reflection: Why This Matters

 

 

When I (finally) discovered my neurodivergence, Prufrock suddenly made sense. Well, a new, nuanced and previously undetected sense instead. His paralysis wasn’t weakness; it was the exhaustion of existing in spaces not built for minds like ours. His fragments weren’t just modernist technique; they were how overwhelming situations actually feel when you’re processing them differently.

 

 

In my work with neurodivergent students through DW Tutoring, I see Prufrock’s struggles daily: brilliant minds convinced they’re “attendant lords,” measuring lives in coffee spoons because authentic existence feels too dangerous.

 

 

But unlike Prufrock, we’re building communities where the mermaids do sing to us, where our differences are strengths, where questions can be asked, and where the connection doesn’t require masks.

 

 

Conclusion: Prufrock’s Gift and Our Response

 

 

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” endures because it articulates the inarticulate, the terror of being seen, the exhaustion of performance, the grief of an unlived life. It gives us language for experiences that often feel unspeakable.

 

 

But we need not be Prufrock. In naming these fears, in finding community, in choosing authenticity despite the terror, we can hear the mermaids singing, each to each. And yes, they will sing to us.

Following my car accident, whilst I was still in the process of my eight-year rehabilitation, I decided it was best for me to return to school, which I did via adult education. I told myself and others at the time that the reason for this was that I knew my old career was over, and I had no interest in becoming a cabinetmaker. According to my occupational therapist, a cabinet maker was the only job option for people in a wheelchair. One of my teachers and mentors later revealed to me that “I was always going to return to study and go to university”.

 

For most of my life until then, I had been told I was stupid and would never achieve anything. If there were moments of encouragement, they were drowned out by all the negative comments. This is yet another major factor behind my decision to leave academia and start my tutoring company. I did not want to see another child battling that sort of negativity. I wanted to be the person that, had I known they existed when I was young, I’d have wanted by my side. For them to have the patience, empathy and insight to help me on my way.

 

A Fork in the Road: Literature and Science

 

So, back to adult education and studying literature. English literature always came quickly to me. It mattered not if it was poetry, a novel or a film. Whilst I chose it as a subject to increase my ATAR (alternatively insert relevant score here), it was also to help ease myself back into study and have some fun. This subject, in particular, laid the foundation of my newfound confidence in knowing I wasn’t the idiot I’d been accused of my whole life (despite autism being relatively well documented even back then), that I was actually capable of studying and, perhaps, even going on to university. I consistently received A+'s for all my assignments and assessments. This helped counter the lower grades I received in other STEM subjects I had not previously taken. When I finally applied for university degrees and scholarships, my teacher and mentor implored me to “Go to university and study Literature and be BRILLIANT!” As you may have already guessed, I trepidaciously dismissed her advice and followed my heart by applying primarily for degrees in animal and veterinary science. There was a double Arts/Science application, but it was around pick five.

 

Navigating Academia as a Disabled, Neurodivergent Student

 

I received a first-round pick for my second choice (BSc. Animal Science), followed by a scholarship. On the day I visited the Open Day, I was offered discounted private student accommodation. It was a straightforward decision. My first year of university was quite challenging. I had moved state, I knew no one there, and I felt isolated and exposed as a mature-aged disabled student. However, as I progressed, I quickly realised that those subjects I had thought so complex and unfamiliar were not so scary. I received first-class honours, which opened the entire academic world to me!

 

Reclaiming My Work, Finding My Purpose

 

That was then, this is now.

 

Recently, it has come to my attention that much of my intellectual property, including poetry from the 1980s and my school work from my Year 11 English literature class, has been stolen and plagiarised completely, unadulterated, in other people’s undergraduate and master's theses. Many of these theses were published recently, which begs the question of why the university wasn’t using plagiarism detection to check them.

 

Furthermore, I have found some to be profiting from my work by selling it to companies like Barnes & Noble (Bartleby) and others.

 

Conclusion

 

Admittedly, I am partially to blame. I uploaded my work (with references removed to try to deter potential theft) to a public poetry website. My reasons for this were to spread my love of English literature and, perchance, inspire young minds to appreciate it as much as I do.

 

As that is still my goal, I will now post a series of analyses and critiques of some of my favourite poems. Including one I hate to love, but I can’t help myself despite its refreshing honesty. I truly hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Hopefully, though, you may wish to join me on this exploration and discussion on this beautiful art form. 

PANDORA'S BOX

HAS LOTS OF SOCKS

AND SHOES AND GLOVES AND HATS

AND MANY CLOCKS

AND A RED FOX

AND MANY KINDS OF CATS

A WIZARD BLOCKS

THE ONE WHO MOCKS

THE BALLS AND STRIKES AT BATS

IN A CHASM

OF SARCASM

WHAT CAN GO WRONG

 

UPS AND DOWNS

TURNAROUNDS

SMILES AND FROWNS

OUT OF BOUNDS

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS

TWISTS AND TURNS

SOMEONE  LEARNS

SOMEONE YEARNS

SOMEONE EARNS

OPTIMISM

CYNICISM

MYSTICISM

CRITICISM

LYRICISM

FLOWING

GROWING

KNOWING

NOTHING

 

 

ROLY POLY TOOTHPICKS

DENSE BUT NOT TOO THICK

FAST BUT NOT TOO QUICK

FACTS THAT JUST DON'T STICK

NONSENSE YOU PREDICT

THEN EMBELLISH IT

IT'S JUST NOT LEGIT

JUST IMAGINE IT

MIGHT JUST BE UNIQUE

MAYBE MAGNIFIQUE

IF IT'S WHAT YOU SEEK

YOU MAY TAKE A PEEK

OPPOSITES ATTRACT

THAT IS JUST A FACT

THE BABBLING BROOK

BABBLES ON 

BABBLE ON

THE WHISTLING WIND

SINGS A SONG 

SING ALONG 

THE WAVES ON THE SHORE

LIKE TO ROAR 

AND EXPLORE

A GENTLE BREEZE

MOVES WITH EASE

RUSTLES LEAVES

TREAD SOFTLY

LISTEN CLOSELY

MESSAGES COME

IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

PAY ATTENTION

TO WHAT THEY SAY

WHEN NATURE SPEAKS