T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)

I'm surprised and a bit dismayed that this isn't one of Eliot's best known works. It's a beautiful and wrenching exploration of the struggle between the will to power and conscience, both in society and in the individual. Whether it be 1170, 1935, or 2026, the conflicts remain unchanged. "Some malady is coming upon us," indeed.

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” T.S. Eliot proclaims in his most quotable poem The Waste Lands. Each line groans under the sheer weight of mortality, despair in the face of the inevitable. But rather than propagate that despair, Eliot’s beauty is in his ability to spawn introspection with the dark plight of the subjects in his poems, to evoke abandon as a counter the inescapable.

As a complete volume, Eliot’s most famous are collected - The Waste Lands and The Love Sond show more of J. Alfred Prufrock - along with some of his lesser known works. Among those lesser known are Four Quartets, free form tone poems that are equally as evocative as anything he ever wrote.

From Burnt Norton:
“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 time is unredeemable.”

A look at almost any literary journal or publication will provide evidence that Eliot was perhaps the most influential modernist poet, establishing a voice that has survived through multiple generations and still inspires replication. Few poets, or writers of any kind, can create the same sense of urgency in life with their work. Reading Eliot is like glimpsing fate in a mirror’s darkened reflection; it demands attention and quickens the heart to action.

Also collected in the volume is Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Adapted after his death into the Broadway mega-hit Cats, the original work has been all but lost in the bright lights. The fourteen short poems, each deconstructing a different feline personality, are wonders of word play. Short of some of the master fantasy writers, Eliot is unrivaled in his ability to create words and phrases to capture feeling. And the lyrical, whimsical cheekiness of the works display a far different aspect of the writer’s personality; the light to the darker work.

Though Eliot’s plays are also collected here, I read the volume for the poetry only, leaving the plays for a different time. The poetry alone is a lifetime study.

Bottom Line: A complete collection of Eliot’s poetry, the famous and not-so-famous; all provocative and surprising with each reading.

5 bones!!!!! show less

I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact?

It's not that Eliot isn't a brilliant poet—he is—it's just that he seems to have a stick up his ass regarding women (especially their sexuality), Jews, and Christian show more heterodoxy. Even when he is writing beautifully and sympathetically (which he often does) about pathetic yet compelling characters, there is an undertone of something stern and uptight. Perhaps it's just a general chauvinism underlying his work. All that being said, this collection is certainly worth reading, if only for "Gerontion" and the Sweeney poems. show less

I enjoyed this book, but there’s something slightly irritating about an author passing off what is clearly a planned and polished work of prose as mere “notes.” There’s nothing note-like about this essay. The chapter on region and culture is also a bit much seeing as Eliot himself was a living repudiation of that chapter’s thesis.

All in all, however, a thought provoking essay, that remains astonishingly relevant today, possibly more so even than when he wrote it.