Just some thoughts

Not my last blog post, actually...I'm probably going to do some next week. Blah blah, that's because I have chronological issues.
Anyway. In one of my other courses we've been reading T.S. Eliot, and it got me thinking more about playing around with words and tones and wondering if there is really a specific formula to writing captivating poetry. With "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men", most of the imagery is pretty bleak and depressing; the poems are flat-out depressing!! There is plenty of tension, given that the tone and general story are of futile longings for salvation in a barren surrounding, but somehow its not something that I really find appealing. Because, in "The Hollow Men", for instance, there is the image of humanity as a row of scarecrows in a barren field, covered in animal carcasses- the statement being that humanity is just countless bodies with nothing inside, no souls, just physical, empty waste in a barren purgatory. The subject is horribly depressing, and in my opinion doesn't give the reader much satisfaction. (Ironic given that Eliot tried to keep individual emotions out of his work. Hmmm.)
And YET, there is something innately appealing about his works. Maybe it is the language, or the sentence structure, or the rhyme scheme, but despite myself and despite being rather turned-off by the themes, Eliot's work appeals to me. Six magical lines from "The Hollow Men": "There, the eyes are/ Sunlight on a broken column/ There, is a tree swinging/ And voices are/ In the wind's singing/ More distant and more solemn/ Than a fading star".
I hope that I can someday incorporate such elegant language into my own work, because it seems to me that with words like that, the subject, theme, and tone of the poem don't matter. I loathe the topics of Eliot's poetry, but I like his work because of the way he discusses things.
That's what is on my mind at the moment.