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The Complete Poems and Plays
Poet, dramatist, critic & editor, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a defining figure of 20th-century poetry. This edition of The Complete Poems & Plays, published for the 1st time in paper, includes all of his verse & work for stage, from Prufrock & Other Observations ('17) to Four Quartets ('43), & includes such literary landmarks as The Waste Land, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats & Murder in the Cathedral.
612 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1952
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About the author
T.S. Eliot
1,088 books5,646 followersThomas Stearns Eliot was a poet, dramatist and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry." He wrote the poems The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets; the plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party; and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot was born an American, moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at the age of 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S._Eliot
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 155 reviews
November 16, 2019
I'm not a poetry guy outside the inspired poetry in the Bible. Four stars is strong. T.S. Eliot, in turn, doesn't engage in poetic tricks for their own sake, but as a format to deliver truth, and sometimes biblical Truth, as I would hope to find it in prose. If there are more poets like him, or Walt Whitman whom I have also like I'll take more poetry, please.
September 7, 2016
Collected Poems 1909-1962
Prufrock (1917)
--The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
--Portrait of a Lady
--Preludes
--Rhapsody on a Windy Night
--Morning at the Window
--The 'Boston Evening Transcript'
--Aunt Helen
--Cousin Nancy
--Mr. Apollinax
--Hysteria
--Conversation Galante
--La Figlia Che Piange
Poems (1920)
--Gerontion
--Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
--Sweeney Erect
--A Cooking Egg
--Le Directeur
--Mélange Adultère de Tout
--Lune de Miel
--The Hippopotamus
--Dans le Restaurant
--Whispers of Immortality
--Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
--Sweeney Among the Nightingales
The Waste Land (1922)
--I. The Burial of the Dead
--II. A Game of Chess
--III. The Fire Sermon
--IV. Death by Water
--V. What the Thunder said
Notes on the Waste Land
The Hollow Men (1925)
--The Hollow Men
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
--I. Because I do not hope to turn again
--II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
--III. At the first turning of the second stair
--IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet
--V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
--VI. Although I do not hope to turn again
Ariel Poems
--Journey of the Magi (1927)
--A Song for Simeon (1928)
--Animula (1929)
--Marina (1930)
--The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954)
Unfinished Poems
Sweeney Agonistes:
--Fragment of a Prologue
--Fragment of an Agon
Coriolan:
--I. Triumphal March
--II. Difficulties of a Statesman
Minor Poems
--Eyes that last I saw in tears
--The wind sprang up at four o'clock
Five-Finger Exercises:
--I. Lines to a Persian Cat
--II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier
--III. Lines to a Duck in the Park
--IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.
--V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg
Landscapes:
--I. New Hampshire
--II. Virginia
--III. Usk
--IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe
--V. Cape Ann
--Lines for an Old Man
Choruses from 'The Rock' (1934)
--I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven
--II. Thus your fathers were made
--III. The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying
--IV. There are those who would build the Temple
--V. O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart
--VI. It is hard for those who have never known persecution
--VII. In the beginning GOD created the world
--VIII. O Father we welcome your words
--IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
--X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
Four Quartets
--Burnt Norton (1935)
--East Coker (1940)
--The Dry Salvages (1941)
--Little Gidding (1942)
Occasional Verses
--Defence of the Islands
--A Note on War Poetry
--To the Indians who Died in Africa
--To Walter de la Mare
--A Dedication to my Wife
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
--The Naming of Cats
--The Old Gumbie Cat
--Growltiger's Last Stand
--The Rum Tum Tugger
--The Song of the Jellicles
--Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
--Old Deuteronomy
--The Pekes and the Pollicles
--Mr. Mistoffelees
--Macavity: the Mystery Cat
--Gus: the Theatre Cat
--Bustopher Jones: the Cat about Town
--Skimbleshanks: the Railway Cat
--The Ad-dressing of Cats
--Cat Morgan Introduces Himself
Plays
--Murder in the Cathedral
--The Family Reunion
--The Cocktail Party
--The Confidential Clerk
--The Elder Statesman
Appendix: Poems Written in Early Youth
--A Fable for Feasters
--A Lyric: 'If Time and Space, as Sages say'
--Song: 'If space and time, as sages say'
--At Graduation 1905
--Song: 'When we came home across the hill'
--Before Morning
--Circe's Palace
--On a Portrait
--Song: 'The moonflower opens to the moth'
--Nocturne
--Humouresque (after J. Laforgue)
--Spleen
--Ode
--The Death of Saint Narcissus
Index of First Lines of Poems
Prufrock (1917)
--The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
--Portrait of a Lady
--Preludes
--Rhapsody on a Windy Night
--Morning at the Window
--The 'Boston Evening Transcript'
--Aunt Helen
--Cousin Nancy
--Mr. Apollinax
--Hysteria
--Conversation Galante
--La Figlia Che Piange
Poems (1920)
--Gerontion
--Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
--Sweeney Erect
--A Cooking Egg
--Le Directeur
--Mélange Adultère de Tout
--Lune de Miel
--The Hippopotamus
--Dans le Restaurant
--Whispers of Immortality
--Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
--Sweeney Among the Nightingales
The Waste Land (1922)
--I. The Burial of the Dead
--II. A Game of Chess
--III. The Fire Sermon
--IV. Death by Water
--V. What the Thunder said
Notes on the Waste Land
The Hollow Men (1925)
--The Hollow Men
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
--I. Because I do not hope to turn again
--II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
--III. At the first turning of the second stair
--IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet
--V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
--VI. Although I do not hope to turn again
Ariel Poems
--Journey of the Magi (1927)
--A Song for Simeon (1928)
--Animula (1929)
--Marina (1930)
--The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954)
Unfinished Poems
Sweeney Agonistes:
--Fragment of a Prologue
--Fragment of an Agon
Coriolan:
--I. Triumphal March
--II. Difficulties of a Statesman
Minor Poems
--Eyes that last I saw in tears
--The wind sprang up at four o'clock
Five-Finger Exercises:
--I. Lines to a Persian Cat
--II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier
--III. Lines to a Duck in the Park
--IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre.
--V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg
Landscapes:
--I. New Hampshire
--II. Virginia
--III. Usk
--IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe
--V. Cape Ann
--Lines for an Old Man
Choruses from 'The Rock' (1934)
--I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven
--II. Thus your fathers were made
--III. The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying
--IV. There are those who would build the Temple
--V. O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart
--VI. It is hard for those who have never known persecution
--VII. In the beginning GOD created the world
--VIII. O Father we welcome your words
--IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears
--X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
Four Quartets
--Burnt Norton (1935)
--East Coker (1940)
--The Dry Salvages (1941)
--Little Gidding (1942)
Occasional Verses
--Defence of the Islands
--A Note on War Poetry
--To the Indians who Died in Africa
--To Walter de la Mare
--A Dedication to my Wife
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
--The Naming of Cats
--The Old Gumbie Cat
--Growltiger's Last Stand
--The Rum Tum Tugger
--The Song of the Jellicles
--Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer
--Old Deuteronomy
--The Pekes and the Pollicles
--Mr. Mistoffelees
--Macavity: the Mystery Cat
--Gus: the Theatre Cat
--Bustopher Jones: the Cat about Town
--Skimbleshanks: the Railway Cat
--The Ad-dressing of Cats
--Cat Morgan Introduces Himself
Plays
--Murder in the Cathedral
--The Family Reunion
--The Cocktail Party
--The Confidential Clerk
--The Elder Statesman
Appendix: Poems Written in Early Youth
--A Fable for Feasters
--A Lyric: 'If Time and Space, as Sages say'
--Song: 'If space and time, as sages say'
--At Graduation 1905
--Song: 'When we came home across the hill'
--Before Morning
--Circe's Palace
--On a Portrait
--Song: 'The moonflower opens to the moth'
--Nocturne
--Humouresque (after J. Laforgue)
--Spleen
--Ode
--The Death of Saint Narcissus
Index of First Lines of Poems
June 8, 2012
Eliot. Hmmmm. You see, Eliot (like Celine) is problematic. Each Jewish reader, when they sit down to read Eliot (or Celine) has to decide for him or herself whether the anti-semitism can be overlooked. Sometimes it can, sometimes it can't. Eliot had no use for Jews (though he did entertain Groucho Marx in his home). But after long consideration many years ago I decided that his poetry wasn't (for some reason which I couldn't pin down) infected by his own personal faults and diseases. (You wouldn't not read a particular author or poet if they had had syphilis, would you?) I really, really enjoy Eliot. All of Eliot. Even the essays. There was one four or five year period when, while jogging, I listened, on my Walkman, to Eliot himself reading "The Waste Land," over and over and over and over, for months, for years. My mother's thesis, back in the late thirties, was a choice between Eliot and Joyce. She finally went with Joyce because, particularly at the time, she couldn't stomach an Eliot project. But years pass. Times change. I once tried to give a copy of the facsimile Waste Land manuscript as a gift to a Freudian analyst. She smiled and refused. The rule: no presents. But though his Missouri values may have left something to be desired, his poetry is universal and great and shockingly beautiful. Don't deprive yourself. Read this book.
July 5, 2020
There is certainly no purpose in remaining in the dark
Except long enough to clear from the mind
The illusion of having ever been in the light.
Except long enough to clear from the mind
The illusion of having ever been in the light.
November 21, 2021
If you're planning to seduce some pretty girl with an intellectual penchant, or a handsome guy who doesn't seem to spend every Saturday night playing pool and drinking Budweiser - well, buy this brick because it might come in handy.
In fact T. S. Eliot's poetry is so multifaceted and mesmerising that no reader can reasonably dislike the corpus of his work. As a matter of fact, it's for all tastes, like those green hospital gowns they wrap us in before taking us to surgery: one size fits all.
"The Complete Poems and Plays" indeed: besides his five plays this volume includes all his poetry, from the first juvenile poems of 1909 to his very last verses of 1962, along with all the minor and unfinished ones, hardly available in other collections and anthologies.
No doubt one of the poet's favourite themes is time: time in itself - its essence - as well as the way it affects our perception. Ever since "Prufrock", his first published collection, his poetry would always be haunted by images of old age, melancholic cityscapes reminding of Baudelaire's, autumnal settings recurring like a déjà vu, and an overall feeling of subtle unease.
The 1920s were probably the decade of his best achievements, what with "Gerontion" (an old man as the symbol of the moral decay of post-WW1 europe), his satirical tableaux (one can't help but think of Joyce's "Ulysses"), the dystopian London of "The Waste Land"; and of course my absolute faves: "The Hollow Men", in which death's kingdom is seen as the only possible redemption for mankind, and "Ash-Wednesday", a manifesto of the poet's hunger for expiation and catharsis, both individual and universal.
Religion is most definitely one of Eliot's recurring themes. The "Ariel Poems" are also based on Christian imagery, biblical characters embodying dimensions of faith in which doubt is not a flaw but rather the origin of hope. It's a complex, convoluted and healthily gloomy religiosity that can be summarised by quoting the final line of "Animula" - words that seem to echo the atmosphere of his major works "The Hollow Men" and "Ash-Wednesday":
'Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.'
The "Choruses for The Rock" are also theologically intense: the Rock is obviously the Church, the ultimate achievement of civilisation and the harbinger of all human redemption.
Okay, T.S.E. WAS a prig.
As for the "Four Quartets", they're often regarded as the apotheosis of his work and existential analysis. Starting with some atmospheric descriptions of English and American landscapes, these poems soon turn into pure metaphysics of time and space: in the poet's eyes, the present is a threshold between the past and the future, or rather between the dimension of time and a timeless dimension.
On the other hand, "Old Possum's Book For Practical Cats" (A. Lloyd Webber's source of inspiration for his musical "Cats") is a delightful collection of poems, lighthearted and playful, each of them portraying a cat with peculiarly anthropomorphic characteristics: the thief, the aristocrat, the murder, the chronically dissatisfied... even the clash of ethnicities is dealt with (Siamese cats versus British feline pirates).
The second part of the book is dedicated to his five plays, including the most famous of them, "Murder in the Cathedral" (based on Thomas Becket's assassination in 1170) in which the protagonist's inner struggle between humility and pride leads him to martyrdom. I also enjoyed "The Family reunion", a crossing between Greek tragedy and existentialism set in an English country house; but then again, only T. S. Eliot could write a play in which the Eumenids meet the British gentry - and a very good one for that matter. Similar themes in "The Elder Statesman", whose protagonist is somehow redeemed by the ghosts of the past come back to haunt the present.
"The Cocktail Party" comes across as a satire of high society's petty intrigues: a middle-aged man dealing with a missing wife and a tormented young lover. Turns out this is yet another example of the author's subtlety, a modern version of the old pact-with-the-devil tale. As for "The Confidential Clerk", the main themes are parenthood (lost, frustrated, unfulfilled or misguided) and identity, and the way they affect one another; it's a witty comedy of errors that progressively slips into a sad ending.
I daresay Eliot's plays are even more ambiguous than his poetry. It's his modus operandi: he picks a deceivingly simple and linear subject and slowly, inexorably turns it into... something else.
In fact T. S. Eliot's poetry is so multifaceted and mesmerising that no reader can reasonably dislike the corpus of his work. As a matter of fact, it's for all tastes, like those green hospital gowns they wrap us in before taking us to surgery: one size fits all.
"The Complete Poems and Plays" indeed: besides his five plays this volume includes all his poetry, from the first juvenile poems of 1909 to his very last verses of 1962, along with all the minor and unfinished ones, hardly available in other collections and anthologies.
No doubt one of the poet's favourite themes is time: time in itself - its essence - as well as the way it affects our perception. Ever since "Prufrock", his first published collection, his poetry would always be haunted by images of old age, melancholic cityscapes reminding of Baudelaire's, autumnal settings recurring like a déjà vu, and an overall feeling of subtle unease.
The 1920s were probably the decade of his best achievements, what with "Gerontion" (an old man as the symbol of the moral decay of post-WW1 europe), his satirical tableaux (one can't help but think of Joyce's "Ulysses"), the dystopian London of "The Waste Land"; and of course my absolute faves: "The Hollow Men", in which death's kingdom is seen as the only possible redemption for mankind, and "Ash-Wednesday", a manifesto of the poet's hunger for expiation and catharsis, both individual and universal.
Religion is most definitely one of Eliot's recurring themes. The "Ariel Poems" are also based on Christian imagery, biblical characters embodying dimensions of faith in which doubt is not a flaw but rather the origin of hope. It's a complex, convoluted and healthily gloomy religiosity that can be summarised by quoting the final line of "Animula" - words that seem to echo the atmosphere of his major works "The Hollow Men" and "Ash-Wednesday":
'Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.'
The "Choruses for The Rock" are also theologically intense: the Rock is obviously the Church, the ultimate achievement of civilisation and the harbinger of all human redemption.
Okay, T.S.E. WAS a prig.
As for the "Four Quartets", they're often regarded as the apotheosis of his work and existential analysis. Starting with some atmospheric descriptions of English and American landscapes, these poems soon turn into pure metaphysics of time and space: in the poet's eyes, the present is a threshold between the past and the future, or rather between the dimension of time and a timeless dimension.
On the other hand, "Old Possum's Book For Practical Cats" (A. Lloyd Webber's source of inspiration for his musical "Cats") is a delightful collection of poems, lighthearted and playful, each of them portraying a cat with peculiarly anthropomorphic characteristics: the thief, the aristocrat, the murder, the chronically dissatisfied... even the clash of ethnicities is dealt with (Siamese cats versus British feline pirates).
The second part of the book is dedicated to his five plays, including the most famous of them, "Murder in the Cathedral" (based on Thomas Becket's assassination in 1170) in which the protagonist's inner struggle between humility and pride leads him to martyrdom. I also enjoyed "The Family reunion", a crossing between Greek tragedy and existentialism set in an English country house; but then again, only T. S. Eliot could write a play in which the Eumenids meet the British gentry - and a very good one for that matter. Similar themes in "The Elder Statesman", whose protagonist is somehow redeemed by the ghosts of the past come back to haunt the present.
"The Cocktail Party" comes across as a satire of high society's petty intrigues: a middle-aged man dealing with a missing wife and a tormented young lover. Turns out this is yet another example of the author's subtlety, a modern version of the old pact-with-the-devil tale. As for "The Confidential Clerk", the main themes are parenthood (lost, frustrated, unfulfilled or misguided) and identity, and the way they affect one another; it's a witty comedy of errors that progressively slips into a sad ending.
I daresay Eliot's plays are even more ambiguous than his poetry. It's his modus operandi: he picks a deceivingly simple and linear subject and slowly, inexorably turns it into... something else.
July 12, 2020
Διάβασα μόνο το Ολοκληρωμένο ποτ πουρί των ποιημάτων του, επομένως μόνο Για αυτα θα μιλήσω. Ο Ποιητής του κυνισμου, της λύτρωσης, της ατέρμονης μεταφυσικής αναζήτησης στα άδυτα της ροής του χρόνου, όπου παρόν μέλλον και παρελθόν είναι το ίδιο στοιχείο υπό διαφορετικό πρίσμα. Βαθύτατα ευαίσθητος, τόσο που ένιωθε τον παραμικρό κλυδωνισμο από τα καταβαθα του ιστορικού γίγνεσθαι. Για αυτόν ο χρόνος ήταν ένας ζωντανός οργανισμός μια πολυθειστικη οντότητα που καταδυναστευε κάθε τι επιστητο και αόρατο στην αίσθηση. Τα τέσσερα κουαρτέτα του ήταν ένας καταιγισμός αλληγοριων και μεταφυσικής. Δε θα πω ψέματα δυσκολεύτηκα να τον ακολουθήσω, αλλά η επιγευση του κάθε του ποιήματος εγχαραξε στο ασυνείδητο μου κάθε του νόημα, ενεργοποιοντας κάτι σαν μια μυστικιστική δυναμη. Αυτή είναι η γοητεία του μοντερνισμου νομίζω, τα θραύσματα μιας φευγαλέας μνήμης που αναδύεται σε ανυποπτους χρόνους στην επιφάνεια της συνείδησης. Δε μου άρεσε σε μερικά ποιήματα ο αγγλικός φορμαλισμος, η εσάνς ενός τεχνοκρατη χαρτογιακα που είχε ένα αδιαλακτο ωράριο, μια ρουτίνα, μια ώρα για τσάι, συνοδευόμενη από μια αποστειρωμενη φειδώ. Ίσως να ήταν και αυτό μέρος της σατυρας του, και του εκφυλισμενου προσώπου της γραφειοκρατικης Αγγλίας. Άριστος, τροχός της τέχνης!
June 18, 2011
We named our kid after the guy. What did you think I was going to rate it?
October 25, 2007
I never understood Eliot on my first reading, but was sucked in by the music of his language. His words are like jazz. As I continued to read, I started to understand what he was saying and not saying. This book taught me how to write poetry, and it holds an honored place on my nightstand.
Read
January 9, 2023Shoutout to Clare Shrake for making me reconsider my avowed disinterest in T.S. Eliot (albeit somewhat against my will)...but that being said, I still would not want to select him as my junior poet. But I am very glad that I read his poetry after hearing a lot about it this past semester. Clare, feel free to disagree with/challenge anything I say here, because of course, I am no Eliot scholar, just an English major with opinions :)
While reading a lot of Eliot's poetry, I simultaneously experienced two things: 1) an impression that this man certainly is a genius and 2) a feeling that I have no idea what he meant to convey with his poetry. I think it's partly because he's more well-read and well-educated than I am, and partly because I didn't take time to pull his poems apart and analyze them at length. I often had the sense that he was using symbolism which would be quite profound if I understood what his words signified. I think I need to continue coming back to his poetry as I get older because every time I re-read Prufrock I'm slightly less weirded out and I appreciate it slightly more, although I doubt I will ever think that The Wasteland isn't strange. I was also surprised sometimes at how clearly his Christianity (Anglo-Catholicism to be precise) came through in some of his works - I had expected it to always be referenced in very veiled/oblique language.
His plays felt quite different than his poetry. A Family Reunion, in an off-putting way, felt like an ancient Greek play to me: Agatha seemed like a Teiresias-esque character, he included the Eumenides and a Chorus, and the characters' words and reactions seemed very un-modern and unexpected. I liked The Cocktail Party a lot better because I felt more connected to the characters, and while it was not strictly realistic, its exploration of human nature and happiness seemed more profound and impactful because I felt it was portrayed in a more believable way.
Honestly I don't think I quite have the right words to express my thoughts, but in general, my attitude towards Eliot is slowly thawing, and there are certain poems which I really liked:
- Portrait of a Lady
- La Figlia che Piange
- Journey of the Magi
- A Song for Simeon
and the Four Quartets was good reading on New Year's!
While reading a lot of Eliot's poetry, I simultaneously experienced two things: 1) an impression that this man certainly is a genius and 2) a feeling that I have no idea what he meant to convey with his poetry. I think it's partly because he's more well-read and well-educated than I am, and partly because I didn't take time to pull his poems apart and analyze them at length. I often had the sense that he was using symbolism which would be quite profound if I understood what his words signified. I think I need to continue coming back to his poetry as I get older because every time I re-read Prufrock I'm slightly less weirded out and I appreciate it slightly more, although I doubt I will ever think that The Wasteland isn't strange. I was also surprised sometimes at how clearly his Christianity (Anglo-Catholicism to be precise) came through in some of his works - I had expected it to always be referenced in very veiled/oblique language.
His plays felt quite different than his poetry. A Family Reunion, in an off-putting way, felt like an ancient Greek play to me: Agatha seemed like a Teiresias-esque character, he included the Eumenides and a Chorus, and the characters' words and reactions seemed very un-modern and unexpected. I liked The Cocktail Party a lot better because I felt more connected to the characters, and while it was not strictly realistic, its exploration of human nature and happiness seemed more profound and impactful because I felt it was portrayed in a more believable way.
Honestly I don't think I quite have the right words to express my thoughts, but in general, my attitude towards Eliot is slowly thawing, and there are certain poems which I really liked:
- Portrait of a Lady
- La Figlia che Piange
- Journey of the Magi
- A Song for Simeon
and the Four Quartets was good reading on New Year's!
Read
February 5, 2018I'm not a huge reader of poetry, and had never read T. S. Eliot, so this was a good experience. I thoroughly enjoyed some of his work, some was clever and funny, and some (like The Waste Land) was impenetrable. I'm choosing not to give a rating, because I'm not sure I could do so fairly.
February 28, 2009
I just realized leafing through his poems that a lot of them have to do with aging gracelessly. I wish that had occurred to me in college. I might have written some better papers.
December 16, 2018
I don't want to rate this genius man. I have named my cat Macavity.
August 16, 2016
T.S. Eliot wrote glorious modernist poetry. I highly recommend the Faber and Faber hardcover edition which includes every poem and play he wrote. "The Wasteland" will leave you purged while "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cat's" will fill you with mirth. I savored every minute as I read each poem.
June 24, 2016
I enjoyed The Waste Land even more the third time around. I did enjoy his poems a lot more than his plays.
August 10, 2019
I only read the poetry, not the plays. It's always good to go back to things you think you know because you skimmed them in college after seeing Apocalypse Now. People say Eliot's "difficult," because of the allusions, but, thanks to the Internet, it's easy to parse his work these days. He's best when he's marrying the quotidian to the classical to break down the wall between the sublime and the everyday and create a sense of timelessness. I also like when he rolls in the gutter and gets a bit naughty. Four Quartets was my favorite, some of the more religious stuff left me cold, and the Book of Practical Cats was just well-written doggerel (see what I did there?). Definitely an influence on many who followed and worth the read just for that.
May 22, 2015
Eliot, like all the greats, is one that you can read again and again and always find some new intricacy. If you love the poems, read the plays-- and this volume is a great way to go about it, refreshing your memory of the poetry before venturing to his attempts at drama, which are littered with references to his earlier lyric work. Both The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party are impressive.
If you don't know the poems, Prufrock and The Waste Land are indispensable, but almost all of the others, even the minor works, are worth reading multiple times. And I'm going to continue saying this anytime it's even close to relevant: the Four Quartets are simply in their own class. There is nothing like them in anything I've read. The grumblers who complain that Eliot loses some of his technical skill in the Quartets (I'm looking at you, Shapiro!) have a point, but this is the first time Eliot cares about something enough to take off his Prufrockian or perhaps Hamlet-esque reserve and speak without irony. "You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid."
If you don't know the poems, Prufrock and The Waste Land are indispensable, but almost all of the others, even the minor works, are worth reading multiple times. And I'm going to continue saying this anytime it's even close to relevant: the Four Quartets are simply in their own class. There is nothing like them in anything I've read. The grumblers who complain that Eliot loses some of his technical skill in the Quartets (I'm looking at you, Shapiro!) have a point, but this is the first time Eliot cares about something enough to take off his Prufrockian or perhaps Hamlet-esque reserve and speak without irony. "You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid."
July 29, 2018
It’s T.S. Eliot, which is enough said. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” will always be one of my very favorite poems for imagery.
“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table...”
And,
“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...”
And,
“But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”
Great stuff!
“Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table...”
And,
“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...”
And,
“But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”
Great stuff!
August 19, 2008
Probably the only poet I have read the entire collected works of. (Verse work he chose to publish in his lifetime, that is.) Having not been prolific, Eliot achieved an extraordinarily high average standard.
I do not profess to "understand" some of Eliot's more notoriously obscure poems, however, I love them for the sound they make.
I do not profess to "understand" some of Eliot's more notoriously obscure poems, however, I love them for the sound they make.
January 25, 2008
I still have the edition I pilfered from my high school library. After I was the only one to check it out for about a year, I decided I would just keep it. And I have loved it ever since. Eliot is titillating and sharp, also poignant and worldly. He was my first poetic love.
June 13, 2022
Eliot was a major voice in 20th century literature and this anthology shows that he was indeed a great poet and an uneven playwright. His poetry is ambitious, complex, and demanding. It's hardly fitting for motivational cards and posters... and that is a good thing. Eliot managed to give voice to the quiet despair of modernity and he did so through a very conscious practice of the poetic language and a vast knowledge of the many intellectual, psychological, and artistic undercurrents of the first half of the last century. So much that there is always a lingering feeling that one should be reading an annotated version of his poetry to fully grasp all its depth and complexities... and yet, such was Eliot's mastery of his poetic voice, that the poems can be enjoyed by themselves. Or, like "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (late turned into a musical theater classic), they offer unexplored depths below it's tongue-in-cheekness and its perfect portrait of feline types.
Now, his plays... "Murder in the Cathedral" is an amazing and deeply literaty exploration of the murder of Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, and it manages to modernize many of the resources of classical plays and it manages to be both modern and perennial. However, "The Family Reunion" and "The Cocktail Party" are, for the lack of a better expression, utterly boring. They have the same literary and cultural ambition of his poetry and they certainly try to explore the same ennui that his best poems, but his portrait of upper-middle English families fail to create compelling characters and the actions is lost among dialogues that even actors with the deepest gravitas would struggle to deliver without laughing at their presumptuosness. Better stick with Eliot the great intellectual poet.
"Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?"
(The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock)
"And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics away."
(Whispers of Immortality)
"Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many."
(The Wasteland)
"Between the desire
And the spam
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow"
(The Hollow Men)
"If the lost word is lost, if the spend words is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."
(Ash-Wednesday)
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All tiem is unredeemable."
(Burnt Norton)
"There is no end to it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayers to Death its God. Only the hardly, hardly prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation."
(The Dry Salvages)
"When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."
(The Naming of Cats)
"He is quiet and small, he is black
From his ears to the tip of his tail;
He can creep through the tiniest crack,
He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack,
He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing
That he is only hunting for mice."
(Mr. Mistoffeles)
Now, his plays... "Murder in the Cathedral" is an amazing and deeply literaty exploration of the murder of Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, and it manages to modernize many of the resources of classical plays and it manages to be both modern and perennial. However, "The Family Reunion" and "The Cocktail Party" are, for the lack of a better expression, utterly boring. They have the same literary and cultural ambition of his poetry and they certainly try to explore the same ennui that his best poems, but his portrait of upper-middle English families fail to create compelling characters and the actions is lost among dialogues that even actors with the deepest gravitas would struggle to deliver without laughing at their presumptuosness. Better stick with Eliot the great intellectual poet.
"Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?"
(The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock)
"And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics away."
(Whispers of Immortality)
"Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many."
(The Wasteland)
"Between the desire
And the spam
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow"
(The Hollow Men)
"If the lost word is lost, if the spend words is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."
(Ash-Wednesday)
"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All tiem is unredeemable."
(Burnt Norton)
"There is no end to it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayers to Death its God. Only the hardly, hardly prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation."
(The Dry Salvages)
"When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name."
(The Naming of Cats)
"He is quiet and small, he is black
From his ears to the tip of his tail;
He can creep through the tiniest crack,
He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack,
He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing
That he is only hunting for mice."
(Mr. Mistoffeles)
October 21, 2025
"Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance."
The Wasteland. Portrait of a Lady. Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Shall I show you "fear in a handful of dust"? If I do it will be found within your own heart and being. In light of what I perceive as Eliot's 'Temporal Cold Wars,' I'll admit that this journey through his collected oeuvre takes me back some four decades to my first experience with Eliot's poetry: reading Prufrock in class during a college English Lit course... amidst the 'curling fog' of a freshman's fresh blank notebook and stack of new books. (Curling fog is one of Eliot's allusions used so memorably in that poem.) And, it is his poetry for which Eliot is most remembered. But, this collection contains all his poetry and fragments as well as his plays.
I was entirely unfamiliar with the plays and their content until this reading. I did enjoy the discovery from a book I found in the poetry section of a 2nd & Charles used bookstore. Though their books are nicely affordable, the poetry always looks 'new', as does this hardback. I could see that it was preowned because someone had penciled history notes in the margins of the historical play Murder in the Cathedral. Otherwise, the book is like new. I can only hope that the prior owner didn't skip all the poetry and just read the one play, because Eliot's poetry has inspired a few generations. I've even seen references to The Wasteland in videogames like Uncharted (the desert scene).
The Hollow Men. Marina. Burnt Norton. Shall we "sharpen the teeth of the dogs"? It is Burnt Norton that I refer to in the title quote. In it Eliot moves the reader mentally from the present to the past, to the future, to remind us that both the present and the past are present in the future... and the reverse. (Like the Temporal Cold Wars in Star Trek). There is so much more here in this collection. I enjoyed reading it in the mornings. There are enough poems that you could read one daily for over a month... and then the plays. His words leave much to think about and are a bit heavy with allusions to absorb all at once.
Eliot was one of the 'Boston Brahmins' born and bred here in the States, but when he was 25, he married and lived in England. He suffered with mental health issues, as did his wife, and he once sought treatment for a nervous breakdown. Much of his poetry reveals his inner life. He eventually renounced his American citizenship to be a British subject. He died in London's Kensington in 1965. But, his words live on in the minds and hearts of so many today.
The Wasteland. Portrait of a Lady. Rhapsody on a Windy Night. Shall I show you "fear in a handful of dust"? If I do it will be found within your own heart and being. In light of what I perceive as Eliot's 'Temporal Cold Wars,' I'll admit that this journey through his collected oeuvre takes me back some four decades to my first experience with Eliot's poetry: reading Prufrock in class during a college English Lit course... amidst the 'curling fog' of a freshman's fresh blank notebook and stack of new books. (Curling fog is one of Eliot's allusions used so memorably in that poem.) And, it is his poetry for which Eliot is most remembered. But, this collection contains all his poetry and fragments as well as his plays.
I was entirely unfamiliar with the plays and their content until this reading. I did enjoy the discovery from a book I found in the poetry section of a 2nd & Charles used bookstore. Though their books are nicely affordable, the poetry always looks 'new', as does this hardback. I could see that it was preowned because someone had penciled history notes in the margins of the historical play Murder in the Cathedral. Otherwise, the book is like new. I can only hope that the prior owner didn't skip all the poetry and just read the one play, because Eliot's poetry has inspired a few generations. I've even seen references to The Wasteland in videogames like Uncharted (the desert scene).
"My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet...
On Margate Sands
I can connect
Nothing with nothing..."
The Hollow Men. Marina. Burnt Norton. Shall we "sharpen the teeth of the dogs"? It is Burnt Norton that I refer to in the title quote. In it Eliot moves the reader mentally from the present to the past, to the future, to remind us that both the present and the past are present in the future... and the reverse. (Like the Temporal Cold Wars in Star Trek). There is so much more here in this collection. I enjoyed reading it in the mornings. There are enough poems that you could read one daily for over a month... and then the plays. His words leave much to think about and are a bit heavy with allusions to absorb all at once.
Eliot was one of the 'Boston Brahmins' born and bred here in the States, but when he was 25, he married and lived in England. He suffered with mental health issues, as did his wife, and he once sought treatment for a nervous breakdown. Much of his poetry reveals his inner life. He eventually renounced his American citizenship to be a British subject. He died in London's Kensington in 1965. But, his words live on in the minds and hearts of so many today.
January 11, 2020
Published in 1952, thirteen years before the death of T. S. Eliot, this volume may not be as complete a collection of the author's poems and plays as may be available today. But it is a satisfying book, not least because of its attractive layout. I borrowed a copy from my local library, the twenty-second printing, copyrighted by Esme Valerie Eliot in 1971. The paper is thick but not inflexible, the font is somewhat bold and the width is greater than that of most books. But it is not as large as a coffee-table book; and that is a great thing. It is a formidable, but manageable book. As for the text itself, it obviously covers most of Eliot's career, and what comes across is the sheer variety of his writing.
A master poet whose words are never awkward, who can be somber, morbid, frolicsome and satirical, Eliot is also deeply spiritual. He starts as something of a hipster and then, in mid-career, harnesses his intellect to express Christian ideas.
CHORUSES FROM "THE ROCK" is a deep defense of the institution of the church; MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL is a thunderous bell peal on the subject of martyrdom.
To follow Eliot from THE WASTE LAND to THE COCKTAIL PARTY is to witness a seeker's journey. The wonderful thing about this collection is that it is in chronological order. It is unadorned by commentary. You meet the man starting out and leave when he is closing down shop. The book is obviously not a complete collection of his works, but this is not merely because he lived many years after this came out, but because it does not include his many essays, reviews and letters. But this is an almost ideal place to start familiarizing yourself with Eliot's output. His writing is not nearly as forbidding as his mastery of form would lead you to expect. For the few times he actually does throw in Greek or French, he writes many more times in English. Read on. He's a poet after all, not an encyclopedia. His themes are death and redemption. The fun stuff.
A master poet whose words are never awkward, who can be somber, morbid, frolicsome and satirical, Eliot is also deeply spiritual. He starts as something of a hipster and then, in mid-career, harnesses his intellect to express Christian ideas.
CHORUSES FROM "THE ROCK" is a deep defense of the institution of the church; MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL is a thunderous bell peal on the subject of martyrdom.
To follow Eliot from THE WASTE LAND to THE COCKTAIL PARTY is to witness a seeker's journey. The wonderful thing about this collection is that it is in chronological order. It is unadorned by commentary. You meet the man starting out and leave when he is closing down shop. The book is obviously not a complete collection of his works, but this is not merely because he lived many years after this came out, but because it does not include his many essays, reviews and letters. But this is an almost ideal place to start familiarizing yourself with Eliot's output. His writing is not nearly as forbidding as his mastery of form would lead you to expect. For the few times he actually does throw in Greek or French, he writes many more times in English. Read on. He's a poet after all, not an encyclopedia. His themes are death and redemption. The fun stuff.
January 14, 2025
"The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre---
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."
Eliot was able to capture so much of the human condition within his poetry. It is filled with an intelligence and insight few could ever hope to achieve. Of course, not every single thing he did was amazing; but taken as a whole, one simply cannot discount his brilliance. And who cannot love an entire collection about cats!? While this is a library copy, I will definitely need to add this book to my shelves very soon. Poems of many topics, but especially those of whimsy, sentiment, and life.
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre---
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire."
Eliot was able to capture so much of the human condition within his poetry. It is filled with an intelligence and insight few could ever hope to achieve. Of course, not every single thing he did was amazing; but taken as a whole, one simply cannot discount his brilliance. And who cannot love an entire collection about cats!? While this is a library copy, I will definitely need to add this book to my shelves very soon. Poems of many topics, but especially those of whimsy, sentiment, and life.
February 5, 2023
This was my first time reading poetry in a while, and I can tell I’m a bit rusty at it. I also know poetry is meant to be reread, and I haven’t reread this book yet. As this was all his poetry and plays, it was interesting to see the shift in Eliot’s writing as his ideology changed. I know “The Waste Land” and “Four Quartets” are his more well known and influential works, but I enjoyed “Ash-Wednesday”, “Choruses From ‘The Rock’”, and “The Cocktail Party” more. Still funny to me that someone decided to make a musical out of his weird cat poems lol.
October 2, 2020
Powerful. Moving.
Eliot's poems are supreme. His plays, very good.
Eliot's poems are supreme. His plays, very good.
September 4, 2010
T. S. Eliot has been for me, for the last several years, the literary equivalent of a monster in the closet. I knew he was there and that some day I would have to face him, but seen through the darkness of my complete ignorance, he seemed a fearsome beast. So I put it off. Now, having finally read many of his most highly esteemed poems and plays, I regret not tackling him earlier—not because his stuff was so great, but because it just wasn’t worth that kind of awe.
Not that Eliot isn’t a great poet; even I can see that he is. But although he knows what he’s doing, and I know he knows what he’s doing, I have no idea what he’s doing. Without ready and constant access to a plethora of reference materials, including dictionaries in translation, I was completely lost at several points. I put off reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for two days until I’d managed to translate the epigraph (in Italian, from Dante). Perhaps Eliot couldn’t care less that I (and most of the English-speaking world) can’t read Italian and simply placed it at the beginning of his work to be ornamental, but I assumed that he meant for the reader to bear it in mind. In which case, translating it would not only have been courteous, but would have been the only way of ensuring that every reader had the same opportunity of reading “The Love Song” proper in the way he intended. However, Eliot clearly is not an “equal opportunity” author.
His work, as presented, is unsuitable for all who do not read and understand English, French, German, Italian, and Greek (in the Greek alphabet), and who have not read The Golden Bough, the Divina Commedia, and the works of Baudelaire (for starters). Though some might argue that this is evidence only that Eliot was writing for a highly educated audience, I believe it implies something else. I believe Eliot was writing primarily, and perhaps exclusively, for T. S. Eliot. I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head (though I’m sure some examples exist) who fulfills all the requirements listed above.
Some readers might not have a problem with that, of course. Some might find that the ambiguity of Eliot’s symbolism is what contributes to their impression of his richness. However, I myself do not feel rich with a trunk full of treasure I have not the keys to open. I find the poems I like the best (“Little Gidding” and “The Hollow Men”) are those I feel I understood the most, and perhaps if Eliot had troubled to broaden his intended audience—that is, if he had troubled to write a little more for me and a little less for himself—I would be in a better position to commend the rest of his poems and plays. As it is, I feel as if I’d been invited to a dinner party at which my host spent the entire evening talking to himself—saying interesting and erudite things, perhaps, but nevertheless not saying them to me.
Not that Eliot isn’t a great poet; even I can see that he is. But although he knows what he’s doing, and I know he knows what he’s doing, I have no idea what he’s doing. Without ready and constant access to a plethora of reference materials, including dictionaries in translation, I was completely lost at several points. I put off reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” for two days until I’d managed to translate the epigraph (in Italian, from Dante). Perhaps Eliot couldn’t care less that I (and most of the English-speaking world) can’t read Italian and simply placed it at the beginning of his work to be ornamental, but I assumed that he meant for the reader to bear it in mind. In which case, translating it would not only have been courteous, but would have been the only way of ensuring that every reader had the same opportunity of reading “The Love Song” proper in the way he intended. However, Eliot clearly is not an “equal opportunity” author.
His work, as presented, is unsuitable for all who do not read and understand English, French, German, Italian, and Greek (in the Greek alphabet), and who have not read The Golden Bough, the Divina Commedia, and the works of Baudelaire (for starters). Though some might argue that this is evidence only that Eliot was writing for a highly educated audience, I believe it implies something else. I believe Eliot was writing primarily, and perhaps exclusively, for T. S. Eliot. I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head (though I’m sure some examples exist) who fulfills all the requirements listed above.
Some readers might not have a problem with that, of course. Some might find that the ambiguity of Eliot’s symbolism is what contributes to their impression of his richness. However, I myself do not feel rich with a trunk full of treasure I have not the keys to open. I find the poems I like the best (“Little Gidding” and “The Hollow Men”) are those I feel I understood the most, and perhaps if Eliot had troubled to broaden his intended audience—that is, if he had troubled to write a little more for me and a little less for himself—I would be in a better position to commend the rest of his poems and plays. As it is, I feel as if I’d been invited to a dinner party at which my host spent the entire evening talking to himself—saying interesting and erudite things, perhaps, but nevertheless not saying them to me.
December 12, 2011
This collection is a monument to 20th century thought. Eliot is an image maker and a wordsmith of the highest caliber and a monumental thinker. His early work, centering so much as it did on the underbelly of human existence (e.g., Prufrock and The Waste Land) demonstrates not only a bleak existence of mankind but the yearning desire to motivate itself towards hostile and ugly things, all the while attempting to perform feats of magic which often go awry.
One can spend a great deal of time on these poems without ever fully understanding them. As such one is able to come back time after time and listen to the haunting words, like a bell in the desert.
Indeed, one ought to be well versed in Eliot's fascination (and excellent translation) of Dante whom he quotes on occasion and refers to often. In addition, one should be aware of his off the cuff classical references which are around every corner: Homer is the greatest referent, as I recall, but he was also fond of Seneca, Ovid and the great Roman writers and they appear often also.
The later poems are far less filled with fatalism but have greater finesse and sense of justification and spirit. Here Eliot is using a scalpel with the mastery and wisdom of age, carefully choosing word meanings and yet leaving conclusions far more fulfilling and meaningful.
To this day I keep a copy of this book in my library and I can see it in its proper place, well worn and heavily marked up, resting against Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Eliot is awe-inspiring as a poet/writer, well worth the time he demands for study... and rest assured that you will come back again and again for further lessons of greatness.
One can spend a great deal of time on these poems without ever fully understanding them. As such one is able to come back time after time and listen to the haunting words, like a bell in the desert.
Indeed, one ought to be well versed in Eliot's fascination (and excellent translation) of Dante whom he quotes on occasion and refers to often. In addition, one should be aware of his off the cuff classical references which are around every corner: Homer is the greatest referent, as I recall, but he was also fond of Seneca, Ovid and the great Roman writers and they appear often also.
The later poems are far less filled with fatalism but have greater finesse and sense of justification and spirit. Here Eliot is using a scalpel with the mastery and wisdom of age, carefully choosing word meanings and yet leaving conclusions far more fulfilling and meaningful.
To this day I keep a copy of this book in my library and I can see it in its proper place, well worn and heavily marked up, resting against Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Eliot is awe-inspiring as a poet/writer, well worth the time he demands for study... and rest assured that you will come back again and again for further lessons of greatness.
April 3, 2008
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
- from "Preludes, IV"
T.S. Eliot may be safely referred to as the most important stylistic influence on English poetry in the last 100 years (perhaps in the last 200, in any language)! His evocative use of imagery and precise control of syntax are absolutely breathtaking, his mastery of tension and juxtaposition may eventually be seen as the archetypal expression of these elements.
Eliot's poetry is not merely stylistic, however: in his content resonants the heartbeat of the human experience. It is an instructive and fascinating to follow his spiritual development from Prufrock and Gerontion (perhaps my own TSE favorite) to The Wasteland, to the depths of The Hollow Men, and thence into a beginning of redemption in Ash-Wednesday, finally culminating in his landmark Four Quartets.
The Complete Eliot should be required reading for all who love poetry - to be skimmed, to be read through, to be pondered, to be absorbed. Read, and re-read and re-read.
July 16, 2014
Nobel Prize Project
Year: 1948
Winner: T.S. Eliot
Review: This contains all the Eliot that's worth reading, except maybe his literary criticism (which I've never read, so it's unfair for me to say it isn't worth reading). Pretty much an essential part of any library. As far as the plays go, I really liked Murder in the Cathedral, the other two are disposable.
Verdict: The knock on Eliot is that his body of classic poetry is really small. His reputation really is built on less than 10 poems, which is weird for a poet in contention for greatest of all time. I agree that his light volume of good poems is a negative, but realistically, "Prufrock" and "Waste Land" alone merit a Nobel Prize. When you add in "Gerontion", "The Hollow Men", "The Four Quartets", and "Murder in the Cathedral", screw low volume, you've got one of the all timers.
Not only that but he's a key part of the most kickass sequence of Nobel winners in history, 1946-1949, Hesse, Gide, Eliot, and Faulkner (and if you wish to extend it 1950 - Bertrand Russell is pretty kickass too). That's insane, it's Gide who is still widely read today and 3 of the 5 most indisputable winners of the prize!
Year: 1948
Winner: T.S. Eliot
Review: This contains all the Eliot that's worth reading, except maybe his literary criticism (which I've never read, so it's unfair for me to say it isn't worth reading). Pretty much an essential part of any library. As far as the plays go, I really liked Murder in the Cathedral, the other two are disposable.
Verdict: The knock on Eliot is that his body of classic poetry is really small. His reputation really is built on less than 10 poems, which is weird for a poet in contention for greatest of all time. I agree that his light volume of good poems is a negative, but realistically, "Prufrock" and "Waste Land" alone merit a Nobel Prize. When you add in "Gerontion", "The Hollow Men", "The Four Quartets", and "Murder in the Cathedral", screw low volume, you've got one of the all timers.
Not only that but he's a key part of the most kickass sequence of Nobel winners in history, 1946-1949, Hesse, Gide, Eliot, and Faulkner (and if you wish to extend it 1950 - Bertrand Russell is pretty kickass too). That's insane, it's Gide who is still widely read today and 3 of the 5 most indisputable winners of the prize!
August 30, 2009
T.S. Eliot was an amazing poet. Then he kept writing. His poetry became worse and his plays were awful. If he would have stopped at The Waste Land, it would have all be fine. He had some fabulous poems before then -- "Gerontion" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," to name a couple. I also managed to get different things on different readings of Prufrock, depending on whether I stop to translate and think about the source of the Italian at the beginning or not. More than once have I identified with the protagonist and felt miserable -- good not because it's happy but because it makes me feel deeply. There was a time when T. S. Eliot was truly amazing, my favorite poet. He just didn't stay that way.
On another note, I was told in an English class that when T. S. Eliot would tour and talk, he would fill football stadiums. We don't have poets like that any more. Why is it? Is it because of poets have changed? The American people? Both? And more interestingly, in what ways have they changed?
On another note, I was told in an English class that when T. S. Eliot would tour and talk, he would fill football stadiums. We don't have poets like that any more. Why is it? Is it because of poets have changed? The American people? Both? And more interestingly, in what ways have they changed?
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