Initial thoughts on T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (a cry for help)

My mom and sister wanted to go shoe/book/grocery shopping the other day, so while they store-hopped, I camped out in Barnes&Noble for a couple hours. The poetry section of this particular branch is in the far back corner of the second floor (it took me a while to find– I had to ask for help, oops). Admittedly, I just picked up this one T.S. Eliot book because I was in a rush to sit down and quickly recognized the name because of Thurtle's class. "The Waste Land" ended up being one of the most dense things I've read in a while, and now I'm kinda wishing we did it in lit this year because I feel like I need a few class periods of discussion or something to understand it fully. There are so many allusions. At a few points I was so absorbed in reading all of Eliot's footnotes that I forgot what the poem itself was saying in the first place. I ended up liking Part V ('What the Thunder Said') quite a bit and was originally going to buy the book so I could mark it up and stuff, but I actually ended up copying it into my notebook because I currently have no more book money left. Someone please talk with me about this poem. It took me forever to do a first read, and I'm not really sure I understand it that much but I think I'd like to.