Although Jacobus draws other interesting parallels in Eliot and Jones, students should be encouraged to draw their own. A review section, For Greater Appreciation , provides excellent questions for class discussion. Prerequisite for understanding the poems of Eliot and Jones is the study of the basic elements of the poem itself. The teacher should make a crucial distinction between poetic image and metaphor. Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space makes it clear that metaphor is a mere analogy for an object or idea.
Image is far more profound.
He states, The reader of poems is asked to consider image not as an object and even less as the substitute for an object, but to seize its specific reality. It is always a little above the language of signification. The poetry of Eliot and Jones draws heavily on universal images of decay, sterility, and alienation. Eliot felt that the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative . . . 2 Students should look for examples of images that serve as objective correlatives in the poems of Eliot and Jones.