The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot.

When one thinks of poetry, it is usually a few stanzas, but in the case of the wasteland, Eliot puts a new outlook on poetry. With countless allusions, and varying changes in rhyme scheme throughout the stanzas and a great many characters, it is no wonder it became one of his most notable works. In a preface, I read that Eliot, never intended to derive a certain meaning to his poem, and that he was really just writing what he thought was best. This is comforting, because the poem itself is very difficult to understand, and a greater than renaissance or literature education would be required to grasp it all without the footnotes. I like how Eliot frequently adds a rhyming couplet near, but not on, the end of the stanzas. He frequently makes use of enjambed lines, often times marking the first word of a sentence at the end of a line. there are many literary techniques involved, and this poem is clearly far from anything prosy sounding.