Marion Post Wolcott/T.S. Eliot: Goin' for a Ride in the Waste Land (Copper Basin, Tennessee)


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Copper mining section between Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939


Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only...


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Copper mining section between Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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A train bringing copper ore out of the mine, Ducktown, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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A train bringing copper ore out of the mine, Ducktown, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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Copper mining section between Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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Copper mining and sulfuric acid plant, Copperhill, Tennessee: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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Copper mining and sulfuric acid plant, Copperhill, Tennessee
: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

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Copper mining and sulfuric acid plant, Copperhill, Tennessee
: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1939

T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land (excerpt), 1922

Photos by Marion Post Wolcott from Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress