On Poetry and Poets

Thoughtful essays on a wide variety of topics written in a lucid elegant prose which is a joy to read. Eliot's has an unwavering belief that poetry shapes and vitalizes the language and, indeed, the culture, but there is a wistful sense that he knows that poetry does not, in fact, fulfill this function. These essays, many of which were originally delivered as addresses, are more easy-going than some of the better known earlier efforts; the opinions are tempered and less given to ex cathedra pronouncements. His tone is more fatherly than paternalistic. He is especially good in discussing why minor poetry matters, but I found his discussion of the social function of poetry, the proper role of poetry criticism, and Great Poets (in the show more context of Goethe) less satisfactory. There are excellent essays on Milton, Johnson, Byron, Yeats, and perhaps surprisingly, on Kipling. show less

My Ph.D advisor Leonard Unger made his career on the first book studying TS Eliot's verse, in 1947, and to the end of his life, as a scholar and wit, he returned to Eliot's subjects, like 17C wits (and Shakespeare) as well as to Eliot himself, in Eliot's Compound Ghost, which strongly influenced my own dissertation, This Critical Age: Deliberate Departures from Literary Conventions in Seventeenth Century English Poetry (1976/ 1981). I read much of On Poetry... prior to graduate school, as an undergrad at Amherst College, in courses on Criticism and in writing my senior thesis on The Uses of Prosody, on four 16 and 17C English poets, Wyatt, Spenser, Donne and Milton. Eliot's reflections on Milton's poetry (two essays here) remark the show more Secretary of State's (then called Latin Secretary, under Cromwell) freedom with blank verse.
Eliot's remarks on Vergil's almost chance prominence in Christian poetry, especially the Fourth Eclogue which happened to mention the Virgin, and a child to be born to eternal life. Eliot may also remark on Vergil's prosody, his alliterative hexameters, but I do not now recall half a century later.
In "On Poetry and Poets," Eliot says a mjor purpose for contemporary poets is to meld in colloquial language without diminishing commonplace activities and thought. I paraphrase, which my mentor L Unger never did. At any rate, Eliot might have been more tolerant than I for the colloquialisms of Rap, though I suspect he too would have considered it what Chaucer's Host asseses Chaucer's own terrible tale to be, "Rime doggerel." show less