Recently I read a book in which a pastor asks her congregants their #1 most frequent thoughts about themselves. People wrote these thoughts on sticky notes and posted them to a giant board inside the church. Thoughts like, “I am not enough,” and “I won’t be okay until I lose weight.” 

If we’re honest, as these churchgoers were, our minds might resemble this board, littered with repetitive and ruthless self-talk. Once those folks witnessed their most oft-thought thoughts en masse, how did they feel? Did it defuse the content of each sticky note, even a little? 

Poetry has many answers for the board full of sticky notes, not least of which is confessional poetry that discloses the poet’s personal vulnerabilities. But there’s also the dramatic monologue, a kind of persona poem that expresses a character’s perspective on something. 

One of the most famous dramatic monologues in our language is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Eliot exposes his fictional character to the utmost, transcribing his inner dithering and dreams. For these 140 lines, we have the keys to Prufrock’s mind.

       “And should I then presume?
       And how should I begin?” 

Prufrock is cripplingly self-aware, ashamed, second-guessing, and lost among the company he keeps. He spends the whole poem fretting. It’s hard to know how seriously to take him. Particularly when he claims to have experienced foretastes of death. 

        “I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter
       And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker…” 

Are these premonitions messages from another world, or mere anxious thoughts about really bad ways a party could end? 

I assume Prufrock wouldn’t tell just anyone these things. Maybe he’d make a crack about his skinny arms at a party, but he wouldn’t voice his fascination with women’s arm hair or the many facets of his own inadequacy. 

In this beloved poem, Prufrock radiates qualities that many people find insufferable. Namely, self-focus, nervousness, and a preoccupation with obscurity (of which death is the ultimate form).

And yet how relatable is his hilarious thought, “Do I dare eat a peach?” 

The first time I read this (16 years old, Mrs. Conrad’s English class), I felt what I later realized was kinship with Prufrock. At the time I thought the tonal cues had swept me up into their spell, and I wasn’t wrong: there was the yellow fog, the mermaids, the digressions, the dislocated snatches of fancy party conversation. 

Of course, Eliot utilizes these sensory and rhetorical details to underline Prufock’s all-too-recognizable mix of self-pity and -importance. The poem is funny because, like all comedy, it cheerfully exploits vulnerabilities for entertainment and connection. The character’s insufferable qualities render artistic gold.

Prufrock is not only self-conscious; he is acutely wise—that weird wisdom that depression and anxiety can endow. He says what he isn’t—a social butterfly, a prophet, Hamlet—and I must say I believe him when he states what he is: 

       “Am an attendant lord, one that will do
       To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
       Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
       Deferential, glad to be of use,
       Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
       Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse…” 

This isn’t the most flattering portrait, but it has a ring of truth to it. Prufrock is not our Romeo, Macduff, or even Puck. But one of the poem’s great tricks is that this character who’d ordinarily be an accessory has been thrust center-stage.   

Prufrock, though wincing at death, captures perfectly how overanalyzers find ourselves in a manic eternity of our own making. As someone plagued by indecision, I hear my own endless hand-wringing in the character’s agonized wisdom. He says, there will be time, 

       “… time yet for a hundred indecisions,
        And for a hundred visions and revisions…” 

Is there actually time? It seems to me that Prufrock either deludes himself about the time he has left, or he’s being ironic. I mean, the last word of the poem is drown, for crying out loud. 

I don’t believe this poem is Prufrock’s mirror but that it’s greater than the sum of his parts. Which is to say, I’m sure if Prufrock were real, he’d be a lovely guy, but his internal life would likely be as excruciating as it sounds through Eliot’s pen. 

Just as this poem is greater than the sum of Prufrock’s parts, so too is that board of sticky notes. We are greater than our most frequent (which might also be our worst) thoughts. And, lucky for us, we can prove it through poetry.