"in the English language while others thought it was esoteric and wilfully difficult. Edmund Wilson, being one of the critics who praised Eliot, called him ""one of our only authentic poets"". Wilson also pointed out some of Eliot's weaknesses as a poet. In regard to ""The Waste Land"", Wilson admits its flaws (""its lack of structural unity""), but concluded, ""I doubt whether there is a single other poem of equal length by a contemporary American which displays so high and so varied a mastery of English verse."" Charles Powell was negative in his criticism of Eliot, calling his poems incomprehensible."
"and annotated by Valerie Eliot. The full poem prior to the Pound editorial changes is contained in the facsimile. The drafts of the poem reveal that it originally contained almost twice as much material as the final published version. The significant cuts are in part due to Ezra Pound's suggested changes, although Eliot himself also removed large sections. The now famous opening lines of the poem—""April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land""—did not originally appear until the top of the second page of the typescript. The first page of the typescript contained 54 lines"
"satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. This structural complexity is one of the reasons why the poem has become a touchstone of modern literature, a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, James Joyce's ""Ulysses"". Among its best-known phrases are ""April is the cruellest month"", ""I will show you fear in a handful of dust"" and """"Shantih shantih shantih"""". The Sanskrit ""mantra"" ends the poem. ""The Hollow Men"" appeared in 1925. For the critic Edmund Wilson, it marked ""The nadir of the phase of despair and desolation given such effective expression in"
"and her husband moved to St. Louis, Missouri, his home town. There Jay and his brother Fred Landesman started the Crystal Palace nightclub. This was a successful venture, attracting big-name acts and producing avant-garde theatre. After sitting in the bar of the Crystal Palace, listening to musicians and audiences, Fran Landesman was inspired to write song lyrics beginning in 1952. One of her best-known is ""Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most"", her exploration of T. S. Eliot's ""April is the cruelest month..."" The Palace's pianist Tommy Wolf set her lyrics to music, and the song became a hit,"
"its best lines. The opening lines are poor, in a weakly sub-Whitmanesque fashion. Yet the writing suddenly picks up at the words, 'The river is within us,' and from there to the end of the section we have a magnificently sustained sequence"". F. B. Pinion believed that ""'The Dry Salvages' is a complicated, uneven, and rather prosy poem, in which Eliot continues to say the same thing, with some progression, mainly in maritime imagery"". The Dry Salvages The Dry Salvages is the third poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"" and marks the beginning of when the series was consciously"
"The Dry Salvages The Dry Salvages is the third poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"" and marks the beginning of when the series was consciously being formed as a set of four poems. It was written and published in 1941 during the air-raids on Great Britain, an event that threatened him while giving lectures in the area. The title comes from the name of a rock formation near a town he spent time at as a child, which reflects Eliot's references to his own past throughout the poem. The poem discusses the nature of time and what humanity's place"
"T. S. Eliot's Ariel poems T. S. Eliot's Ariel poems are those written for Faber and Faber's series of ""Ariel Poems"". All but ""Triumphal March"" also appear in his book ""Collected Poems: 1909–1962"" under the heading ""Ariel Poems"". In 1925, Eliot became a poetry editor at the London publishing firm of Faber & Gwyer, Ltd., after a career in banking, and subsequent to the success of his earlier poems, including ""The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"" (1915), ""Gerontion"" (1920) and ""The Waste Land"" (1922). In 1927, Eliot was asked by his employer, Geoffrey Faber, one of the partners in"
"be still, and wait without hope."" ""The Dry Salvages"" treats the element of water, via images of river and sea. It strives to contain opposites: ""The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled."" ""Little Gidding"" (the element of fire) is the most anthologised of the Quartets. Eliot's experiences as an air raid warden in the Blitz power the poem, and he imagines meeting Dante during the German bombing. The beginning of the Quartets (""Houses / Are removed, destroyed"") had become a violent everyday experience; this creates an animation, where for the first time he talks of Love as the"
"on October 31, which particularly in the United States were conflated with Guy Fawkes’ celebrations over the course of the 19th Century. Some critics read the poem as told from three perspectives, each representing a phase of the passing of a soul into one of death's kingdoms (""death's dream kingdom"", ""death's twilight kingdom"", and ""death's other kingdom""). Eliot describes how we, the living, wish to be seen by ""Those who have crossed/With direct eyes [...] not as lost/Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men."" The image of eyes figures prominently in the poem, notably in one of Eliot's"
"The Hollow Men ""The Hollow Men"" (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot. Its themes are, like many of Eliot's poems, overlapping and fragmentary, but it is recognized to be concerned most with post–World War I Europe under the Treaty of Versailles (which Eliot despised: compare ""Gerontion""), the difficulty of hope and religious conversion, and, as some critics argue, Eliot's own failed marriage (Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot might have been having an affair with Bertrand Russell). The poem is divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines of which the last four are ""probably the most quoted lines of"
"From 1898 to 1905, Eliot attended Smith Academy, where his studies included Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and German. He began to write poetry when he was fourteen under the influence of Edward Fitzgerald's ""Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"", a translation of the poetry of Omar Khayyam. He said the results were gloomy and despairing and he destroyed them. His first published poem, ""A Fable For Feasters"", was written as a school exercise and was published in the ""Smith Academy Record"" in February 1905. Also published there in April 1905 was his oldest surviving poem in manuscript, an untitled lyric, later revised"
"but from sparrows—the mice of the bird world—in the gutters of the street. The poem has been read as a condemnation of modernity, and specifically of urban life. ""People are but the equivalent to the ugliness within the scope of their vision"" (Smith 6). Preludes (poem) ""Preludes"" is a poem by T. S. Eliot, composed between 1910 and 1911. It is in turns literal and impressionistic, exploring the sordid and solitary existences of the spiritually moiled as they play out against the backdrop of the drab modern city. In essence, it is four poems rather than one, and it is"
"Little Gidding (poem) Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"", a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot's declining health. The title refers to a small Anglican community in Huntingdonshire, established by Nicholas Ferrar in the 17th century and scattered during the English Civil War. The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and"
"T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot, (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965), was an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and ""one of the twentieth century's major poets"". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American passport. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem ""The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"" (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the"
"Four Quartets Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ""Burnt Norton"", was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ""Collected Poems 1909–1935"".) After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, ""East Coker"", ""The Dry Salvages"", and ""Little Gidding"", which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career (""East Coker"" in September"
"opinions. Bergonzi emphasised the ""beautifully controlled and suasive opening"" and claimed that ""It contains some of Eliot's finest poetry, a true musicalization of thought"". According to Peter Ackroyd, Burnt Norton', in fact, gains its power and its effects from the modification, withdrawal or suspension of meaning and the only 'truth' to be discovered is the formal unity of the poem itself."" Burnt Norton Burnt Norton is the first poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"". He created it while working on his play ""Murder in the Cathedral"" and it was first published in his ""Collected Poems 1909–1935"" (1936). The poem's"
"Preludes (poem) ""Preludes"" is a poem by T. S. Eliot, composed between 1910 and 1911. It is in turns literal and impressionistic, exploring the sordid and solitary existences of the spiritually moiled as they play out against the backdrop of the drab modern city. In essence, it is four poems rather than one, and it is duly labelled as such. Composed over the course of four years in France and the United States, it comes to just 54 lines. Its four parts are uneven, irregular and written in free verse symptomatic of the speaker's stream of consciousness. Part I is"
"May and June, and it was published on its own by Faber and Faber in September. With the completion of the poem, Eliot began creating the ""Four Quartets"" as a series of four poems based on the same theme with ""Burnt Norton"" as the first in the series and ""East Coker"" as the second. ""East Coker"" is described as a poem of late summer, earth, and faith. As in the other poems of the ""Four Quartets"", each of the five sections holds a theme that is common to each of the poems: time, experience, purgation, prayer, and wholeness. The time"
"""Little Gidding"" Eliot achieved ""that for which he envies Dante—namely, a poetry of belief, in which belief and words are one, and in which the thought cannot be prized free from the controlled and beautiful language"". Little Gidding (poem) Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"", a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot's declining health. The title refers to a small Anglican"
"Burnt Norton Burnt Norton is the first poem of T. S. Eliot's ""Four Quartets"". He created it while working on his play ""Murder in the Cathedral"" and it was first published in his ""Collected Poems 1909–1935"" (1936). The poem's title refers to a Cotswolds manor house Eliot visited. The manor's garden served as an important image within the poem. Structurally, the poem is based on Eliot's ""The Waste Land"" with passages of the poem related to those excised from ""Murder in the Cathedral"". The central discussion within the poem is on the nature of time and salvation. Eliot emphasises the"
"death of John Ferrar in 1657. Eliot had visited the site in May 1936. Unlike the other locations mentioned in the titles of the ""Four Quartets"" poems, Eliot had no direct connection to the original Christian community. As such, the community is supposed to represent almost any religious community. Critics classify ""Little Gidding"" as a poem of fire with an emphasis on purgation and the Pentecostal fire. The beginning of the poem discusses time and winter, with attention paid to the arrival of summer. The images of snow, which provoke desires for a spiritual life, transition into an analysis of"
"importance of his poetic memorial of these revolutionary figures. The date of the Easter Rising can be seen in the structure of the poem also: there are 16 lines (for 1916) in the first and third stanzas, 24 lines (for April 24, the date the Rising began) in the second and fourth stanzas, and four stanzas in total (which refers to April, the fourth month of the year). Easter, 1916 Easter, 1916 is a poem by W. B. Yeats describing the poet's torn emotions regarding the events of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule on Easter Monday,"
"1915, Ezra Pound, overseas editor of ""Poetry"" magazine, recommended to Harriet Monroe, the magazine's founder, that she publish ""The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"". Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to ""a patient etherised upon a table"", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when Georgian Poetry was hailed for its derivations of the nineteenth century Romantic Poets. The poem follows the conscious experience of a man, Prufrock (relayed in the ""stream of consciousness"" form characteristic"
"Ash Wednesday (poem) Ash Wednesday (sometimes ""Ash-Wednesday"") is the first long poem written by T. S. Eliot after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism. Published in 1930, this poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God. Sometimes referred to as Eliot's ""conversion poem"", ""Ash-Wednesday"", with a base of Dante's ""Purgatorio"", is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The style is different from his poetry which predates his conversion. ""Ash-Wednesday"" and the poems that followed had a more"
"of the same length he ever wrote, and is his greatest achievement in the ""Four Quartets""."" E. M. Forster did not like Eliot's emphasis on pain and responded to the poem: ""Of course there's pain on and off through each individual's life... You can't shirk it and so on. But why should it be endorsed by the schoolmaster and sanctified by the priest until the fire and the rose are one when so much of it is caused by disease and bullies? It is here that Eliot becomes unsatisfactory as a seer."" Writing in 2003, Roger Scruton wrote that in"
"""To my wife"", referring to Eliot's first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, with whom he had a strained relationship, and from whom he initiated a legal separation in 1933. The dedication does not appear in subsequent editions. Vladimir Nabokov parodied ""Ash Wednesday"" in his novel ""Lolita"". In chapter 35 of Part Two of Nabokov's book, Humbert's ""death sentence"" on Quilty parodies the rhythm and use of anaphora in T. S. Eliot's poem. According to David Rampton, ""...Quilty's versified death sentence is, in part, a comic version of ""Ash Wednesday."""" Ash Wednesday (poem) Ash Wednesday (sometimes ""Ash-Wednesday"") is the first long poem"
"in 1918 by Robert Bridges. Free verse and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era, with which T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were especially associated. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born American, migrated to England in 1914, and he was ""arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century."" He produced some of the best-known poems in the English language, including ""The Waste Land"" (1922) and ""Four Quartets"" (1935–1942). The Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) and John Masefield (1878–1967, Poet Laureate from 1930) maintained a more conservative approach to poetry"
"that he started working on it again. In total, there were five drafts. The poem was finished by 19 September 1942 and published in the October ""New English Weekly"". ""Little Gidding"" was intended to conclude the ""Four Quartets"" series, summarising Eliot's views expressed in this series of poems. Little Gidding was the home of an Anglican community established in 1626 by Nicholas Ferrar. The Ferrar household lived a Christian life according to High Church principles and the ""Book of Common Prayer"". The religious community was dispersed during the English Civil War between Parliamentarians and Royalists but reformed, ending with the"
"Britain and helping out during the war when he could. It was during this time that Eliot began working on ""The Dry Salvages"", the third poem, which was put together near the end of 1940. This poem was published in February 1941 and Eliot immediately began to plot out his fourth poem, ""Little Gidding"". Eliot's health declined and he stayed in Shamley Green to recuperate. His illness and the war disrupted his ability to write and he became dissatisfied with each draft. He believed that the problem with the poem was with himself and that he had started the poem"
"Reverend Robin Griffith-Jones, an Anglican cleric, as a tacit tribute by Eliot to his grandfather, ""for the last years of a grandfather whose faith his grandson has at last taken up for himself"". Scholars have identified allusions by Eliot to other biblical passages, including: ""A Song for Simeon"" is not considered by scholars and critics to be one of Eliot's significant poems. It is thus overshadowed by his comparatively better known works of the period—""The Hollow Men"" (1925), written before his conversion; and ""The Journey of the Magi"" (1927), ""Ash Wednesday"" (1930), and the later, more substantial ""Four Quartets"" (1943),"
"of the television series ""JAG"" where the protagonist is subjected to disinformation. Another prominent line in the poem, ""In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas/To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk"", is the origin of the title of Katherine Anne Porter's first collection of short stories, ""Flowering Judas and Other Stories"" (1930). There is a connection between ""Gerontion"" and Eliot's understanding of F. H. Bradley's views. In Eliot's doctoral dissertation, later published as ""Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley"", Eliot explores Bradley's philosophy to determine how the mind relates to reality. By relying"
"Journey of the Magi Journey of the Magi is a 43-line poem written in 1927 by T. S. Eliot (1888–1965). It is one of five poems that Eliot contributed for a series of 38 pamphlets by several authors collectively titled ""Ariel poems"" and released by British publishing house Faber and Gwyer (later, Faber and Faber). Published in August 1927, ""Journey of the Magi"" was the eighth in the series and was accompanied by illustrations drawn by American-born avant garde artist Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890–1954). The poems, including ""Journey of the Magi"", were later published in both editions of Eliot's collected"
"""fiery heart,"" depicted the bird ""as an instance of natural poetic creation,"" and as the ""voice of nature."" Other notable mentions include: The Philomela myth is perpetuated largely through its appearance as a powerful device in poetry. In the 20th century, American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) directly referenced the myth in his most famous poem, ""The Waste Land"" (1922), where he describes, <poem> The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, ""Jug Jug"" to dirty ears."