There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact...

>There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him “personal.” Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

what did he mean by this?

"I hate myself and want to die"

Weirdly, that's also I got from the quote. It's not evident anywhere in it, but on an intuitive level, it reeks of self-loathing.

he means a poet writes with the force of a personality (not his own) but which is nevertheless a real and genuine entity (as opposed to actors who only act out or mimic another being, the poet "evokes" or "creates" something that is a true and living thing; a personality)
as this personality, the poet then begins a process of impersonal creation (from the point of view of his authentic person), which is to say, he escapes authentically via the utilization of the Other that he has evoked, personified, and ultimately, briefly become. Therefore he writes real, authentic emotions; but not his own. And he has a real, authentic personality at the point of creation that translate into the work; but again, not his own measly, vulgar one
So, The Wasteland was written by Eliot, but not his personality. Nevertheless, Eliot was constructing the poem through a personality, as all good poets should when writing

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well thats a very personal opinion

He means that he's a hack and he's overrated. The great poet is someone with a soul so big he contains the world.

never trust a man who wears a three-piece suit but still calls himself a poet.

Is the Cantos his biggest work? Should I read the rest too?

You care too much (consciously) about the small things, while the tradition you write in breathes through you. This is the difference between high-school poetry you write when you're 16, to the poetry you write when you're 30, to the poetry you write later on. The developing consciousness develops control over its art. What you desire is not a means expressing "yourself", but a means of connecting yourself to the tribe.
Finally you realize

this

>"The world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper"
Literally all you need to know about this guy

He meant "Real poets are never personal, so stop looking at my autobiographical poetry for revealing shit about my secret life and sexual problems, damn it!" Why do you think they called him Old Possum? The guy invented an entire school of criticism and had his wife put in an insane asylum just to hide his gay life as "The Captain."

...

If Eliot was a homo he wouldn't have been as much of a sperg around women.

This is babies first critical theory nonsense. OP’s quote is less personal and more just Elliott parroting Irving Babbitt’s criticism of romanticism. Most of Elliott is just Babbitt minus Buddhism.

I did my MA thesis on Eliot. If you don't know about "The Captain" in green makeup, and 38 Burleigh Mansions in 1923, or the homeroticism in Eliot's work, or the Colombo verses, or Jean Verdenal, or Eliot's vow of celibacy and what lay behind it, carry on.

I hope that's not you willy nibbler.

Every reasonable person feels like this at least 50% of the time

It can be taken as writing advice or just as well as a comment on the nature of poetry. One will anyway reveal the other.

There's an erroneous belief that if an emotion is genuinely felt, it will transmit naturally into good poetry. The Romantics believed something like this, but more specifically thought poets should be honest about their inspirations, not that that inspiration will assuredly lead to good poetry. After all, poets don't hone their craft by working on inflating their emotions to create grander poetry; to get better, they pay attention to the sounds of words, their usage, and so on.

By way of analogy, perhaps you can recall being so overcome with emotion that you were struck dumb, despite being desperate to share your feelings with someone. Despite the honesty of your emotion, your ability to communicate (which of course relates to poetry) was compromised.

If it were so easy, you could just get hammered and (supposing you enjoy getting drunk) write pages of brilliant prose, able to capture the excitement and joy of intoxication. More likely than not you'll realize you just enjoy everything more while drinking, and in the morning when you're sober or worse the writing you were so excited about the night before will reveal itself for what it is: not very good.

If you can catch your emotion as if they were a fly buzzing in front of your face, you're able to examine them. It's not so important that you investigate their contours while you're still experience them, but only that you can describe the experience -- or whatever you want to describe -- reliably.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

>There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him “personal.” Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things

Wow what a shocker an MA thesis about how an author was actually super gay. What original insight!

What a pretentious quote.

No, my thesis was more about his use of water imagery in Ash-Wednesday. But the research does suggest a lot of repressed and hidden shit in Eliot's sexuality.