Though it is rare to find a discussion that does not add to one's understanding of The Waste Land, a sense nonetheless persists that something about the poem remains disembodied, out of context, just beyond critical reach. However necessary, the decades of source hunting and literary sleuthing proved to be only an intermediate stage that, far from slowing down the proliferation of interpretation, probably accelerated it. Despite renewed attention to The Waste Land recently, asking “How do we read this poem?” remains a legitimate question. Perhaps it is the only question. Yet as if this fundamental inquiry were not difficult enough, the subsidiary problems of linking The Waste Land to Eliot's prose criticism and fitting it into his poetic development also remain to be explored.