Jeff Bezos Rejects “The Waste Land”

From the archives of Poetry magazine

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
543 Cass Street
Chicago, Illinois

T.S. Eliot
9 Clarence Gate Gardens
Regent’s Park
London NW1

Dear Tom,

Thank you for sharing with us a draft of your poem “The Waste Land.”

I was initially encouraged by the slant rhymes in the opening:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring...

But you quickly abandon that scheme, and then the poem feels like a random procession of gloomy observations. Without rhyming, it’s too easy.

Worse, most of this poem seems to have nothing to do with personal liberties or free markets. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” -- come on, Tom! Work hard. Have fun. Make history! We’re Earth’s most customer-centric company. We don’t show fear on Day 1!

I’m also sorry to see that some of these words don’t even appear to be in English. Foreign words score poorly on reader surveys of likeability.

Which reminds me: “April” is a no-go for “the cruellest month.” Marketing should have told you we’ve got Prime Day scheduled for April -- we need alignment across the whole organization.

To be honest, I’m not sure there’s a market for “The Waste Land.” The poem needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet -- whether its trousers are rolled or not. If people won’t pay for our product, it’s not a good enough product.

I did like this part, though, which aligns perfectly with our Same-Day Delivery Promise®:

HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME

Our logistics team will be in touch to discuss licensing that phrase. It’ll look terrific on the vans!

Give my love to Viv.

Jeff

Jeff Bezos, Editor
Poetry