What is an eco-poetic reading of TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land'? In this discussion of Eliot's poetry I will examine the content through the lens of eco-poetics. Ecopoetics is a literary theory that favors the rhizomatic over the arborescent approach to critical analysis. The characteristics of the rhizome will provide the general structure of this essay. First, rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. This will guide the study of significant motifs in "The Waste Land". Secondly, they grow and spread through experimentation within a context. This will be reflected in the study of the voice and language with which the poem opens. Third, rhizomes grow and spread regardless of breakage. This will allow for an eco-poetic reading of the last eight lines of the poem. Fourth, rhizomes grow through underground networks and this provides a framework for studying references and allusions within the poem. Aware that this already sounds prescriptive and therefore contrary to the spirit of what Deleuze and Guattari propose in their rhizomatic approach, I will, fifthly, use the definition of rhizome to try to capture what is pertinent if elusive to this approach: a lack of stasis. A rhizome can sprout roots or shoots from any part of its surface", which suggests the connections, variations, and unpredictable expansions possible in poetry read rhizomatically. First, rhizomes can map in any direction from any starting point. I'll start in the middle of the poem, in Part 3, “The Fire Sermon,” of a 5-part poem and I will examine the theme of landscape Eliot opens “The Fire Sermon” with the description of a desolate scene along the river. The land is "brown" and strangely the wind is "unheard of". you consider the richness of this 'someone's' imagination, their isolation and alienation and possible nervous breakdown and this leads you to think about the conditions that led to this situation , 'that's simple fineness of detail constitutes a direction,” or that it is a “watermark without pattern,” both quotes suggest to the reader what the formalists claimed, that it is valuable for its form. Eliot himself eventually said that his poem was a "rhythmic lament". Whatever it is, it is certainly more than the sum of its parts. And no more than wildly spreading rhizomes is there any meaning with 'The Waste Land', that you're about to decide on the meaning when it spreads out from under your reach again..