From How to Read ‘The Waste Land’ So It Alters Your Soul by Mary Karr:
Just take the references and other aspects of the poem on blind faith. Read it first for joy. Shut up your head’s claptrap and open yourself to fall in love with it. Treat it like a first date, which should begin with ignorance but also with hope. Only if you fall in love do you make a study of the beloved, for only passion lets us inquire into other people’s mysteries with the vitality born of conviction. With enough ardor, your date’s off-putting manner of dismantling chicken becomes an adorable nuance. So it is with “The Waste Land.”
[emphasis mine]