Customer Reviews

T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (The Centenary Edition)

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Every now and then certain turns of phrase or glimpses of landscapes in special light or just buried memories of poetic lines surface and send us back to the source for more. So often that source for this reader is TS Eliot and encountering this wondrous collection of his poems written between 1909 and 1962 reinforces the power of this great man of letters. This collection includes the major poems, those works that impacted our philosophy and our art in ways we are only now beginning to appreciate. From the ever fresh LOVE SONG OF J.ALFRED PRUFROCK "I grow old...I grow old.../I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" and "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown/Till human voices wake us, and we drown.") to the great FOUR QUARTETS ("In my beginning is my end"), this poet rattled the universe and simultaneously whispered solace in our ears like few others have done. While my own energies are always looking for the new in poets and in writers, finding that the throne of literature has never been so sought after, I am deeply moved by returning to the masters, the source of it all. This is a fine collection for the Eliot devotees as well as for those who seek to appreciate the great voices of literature. Here are savoury moments in abundance!

Love him or hate him, you cannot deny his power. All arguments for and against Mr. Eliot can be countered easily and each have in them flaws that are substantial. T. S. Eliot cannot be read like most poets. Like the eastern scriptures he so loved, Eliot will take a lifetime for the reader to digest. Read and re-read. Question and re-read again. I became familiar with his works years ago. I have yet to tire of them. Eliot will grow with you, for his poems are the story of a man always growing and always searching. Discount the fighting that academics have over him. Read him for yourself. Immerse yourself in the spiral of darkness and light that is his poetry and judge for yourself. In the end, no matter what you think, you will not be able to deny his effect.

I became familiar with Eliot's work chronologically, learning something new at each step. "Prufrock" introduced me to modern poetical structure, "The Waste Land" showed me how literary allusion can enrich verse, "Ash-Wednesday" refreshed the world of religious poetry, and the supernal "Four Quartets" was for me a metaphysical insight of the greatest beauty.

Eliot is without a doubt the finest poet of the 20th century, perhaps the finest poet ever. His contributions to the poets who came after him, and to literature in general, are persistently evident. Eliot doesn't always succeed, and many of his poems seem trite and pretentious, but when he succeeds he hits dead on with poetry perfect in form, balance, and sound. There is the man here, the poet as reflected in his own work, but there is also common human experience through looking at history ("The Waste Land") and meditating on Man's relationship with the Divine and the eternal (Ariel Poems, and most of his output after 1928).

When you think of the best poets ever, T.S. Eliot is one of those that comes to mind. His work is well crafted, intelligent, beautifully written, and has a flow to it that few poets can match. And this is a fine collection for the Eliot lover or for the reader unfamiliar with Eliot. It's divided into several sections. The first section is his Prufrock section, poems from 1917, which contains probably his finest poems: "Prufrock", "Preludes" "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", "Hysteria", among others. Then there is the Poems 1920 section which also contains many fine poems ("Sweeney Erect" and "The Hippopotamus" being my favorites). Then follows his masterpiece The Wasteland. Then The Hollow Men which is followed by the wonderful Ash Wednesday. Then the Ariel Poems (which contains "Journey of the Magi"). Then there are two unfinished poems, "Sweeney Agonistes" and "Coriolan" which I thought were weak. Maybe they would have been great had he ever finished them. Then there is a section called minor poems followed by the mediocre "Choruses from 'The Rock.' And then there is what I consider to be his true masterpiece, "Four Quartets." And the book finishes with some occasional verses, one of which is a sweet and touching poem to his wife. This is a great collection of poems.

Responding to the response to the first review. Kerry Flannery-Reilly was thinking of _The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950_, which is not complete, because it only includes 2 plays and lacks a few of the poems (including "The Cultivation of Christmas Trees," the last _Ariel Poem_ and the beautiful "A Dedication to My Wife" which Russell Kirk highlights as the capstone of _Eliot and His Age_). This volume, _Collected Poems_, contains the complete poems Eliot wrote in his adulthood except for _Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats_ and, of course, the plays (to be found in _Collected Plays_.

PRUFOCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS
THE LOVESONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFOCK
This poem is a beauty. The language is so fluent that it flows lightly and evenly between our ears and its music is perfect and delightful. The images build up a crown or a wreath, according to tastes, life and death mixing equally with love and gloat. Deeply shakespearian by its syntax it is pure Chopin by its music, both rhythm and notes.

THE WASTE LAND
One of T.S. Eliot's bestknown poems. What I am feeling is more an impression than a meaning. The world is old, like coming to its end, decaying. The poet sees and only sees. It is soundless and yet it is music. He brings together all sorts of recollections, experiences and small vignettes of the world, and a whole array of references to all kinds of cultures to show how the past is foregone and the future is not there. There remains only the thunder that speaks unaudible sounds of farewell on a road we cannot even see, nor follow as for that.

THE HOLLOW MEN
It is the end of the world, and this is nothing but a whimper because men are hollow. They do not contain anything. They are ghosts of history, so that history itself is a ghost and the world has no future. This poem is extremely and astoundingly modern indeed. NO FUTURE.

ASH WEDNESDAY
This poetry is entirely dedicated to death, but also to the time between birth and death, a time of turning, a time that is felt like flying, going, flowing but there is no word, no world able to whirl any sound. Men are like living deads, already dead and moving towards death with no hope, except maybe the hope of God, but God is silent, so there is the only consolation of the Lady who is also silent and comes only after death to stare more than anything else.

CHORUSES FROM « THE ROCK »
« Where is the Life we have lost in living ? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge ? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ? » These choruses are entirely dedicated to God, but with some original approach. What is important is what comes from God. God is light, but a light that is invisible and it is this invisible light that must help us never to forget that man is spirit and body, just like the Temple, and that the spirit suffers when the body suffers. And the body does suffer a lot in our mechanical times. The body is split in myriads of individuals who do not think the body as one, and society as one, and this oneness as communion with the light of God, an invisible light in a time when touching is the proof of existence.

FOUR QUARTETS
By far the crowning of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The evanescent equilibrium point between a whole set of couples of antagons. The present is such a point, but demultiplied by a myriad of other couples. Past-Future, Has-been-Might-have-been, and this point is movement, constantly moving between those antagons. It gives you a vertigo, the vertigo we feel in front of the present that is a constantly moving equilibrium point. Fascinating. Men are no longer hollow but they are unstoppable motion. They are some light, fine and fuzzy moving line between all the antagons of human nature, of nature as for that. Then a long and rich metaphor of life with the sea, neverending movement that ignores past and future but is pure present and nothing else. Men and women can only worship this everlasting present motion, time and place that is no time, no place and no motion, just unstable energy burnt in its own existence.

OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
A set of nice and musical poems on various cats. They are enchanting and light and every rhyme is the best, each one better than all the others. A little book to be given to boys and girls who do not know yet that language is art and speaking may be a compliment to their lives.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Certainly this is a valuable and nicely done volume of Eliot's work. But the Centenary Edition of his collected poetry does not contain many of the pieces claimed in the Reilly review. It certainly does not include any of Eliot's plays--as should be expected in a publication titled "Collected Poems." Nor does it include, in entirety or in selection, anything from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." I wish I had a copy of the book Kerry Reilly read: it is a volume vastly superior in content to the Collected Poems 1909-1962 published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (cover showing). Perhaps Reilly has mistakenly reviewed Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950 instead of Collected Poems 1909-1962. This is an excellent collection, but it bears little similarity to Kerry Flannery Reilly's version of it. Buyer beware.

To judge from the amount of space devoted to Eliot in the latest collections of C20 American Poetry, Eliot doesn't seem to be popular any more. I guess he's regarded as too highbrow and too Catholic. Anyone who tends to believe this must read "Prufrock" and enjoy its vigour, its irony and its sheer cleverness. I always loved the tremendous amount of aggression in those early Eliot poems, very often directed at the speaker himself. Once you've come to like the young Mr Eliot, you might give the later stuff a try as well. Far from being "junk", the Quartets do not just have a fascinating musical structure, but also embody a view of life, history and religion which is not so daft after all...

Eliot's mastery of the complicated form and intense imagery of modernist poetry is without comparison. His complexity of allusion and intertextuality, his irreverence in moments of drama, his quirky and sometimes self-deprecating humour amidst the brightness and freshness of his own particular brand of the modernist form is starkly and completely unique.

Eliot is a landscape populated with the dirty, smelly working class amidst mythical themes and figures; his imagery both divine and shockingly, intimately basic; his often symphonic (ie Preludes) form so true to the rejection of a linear narrative.

Some may see some of Eliot's work as overly bizarre or even inaccessible; but even ignoring the grandness of allusion, the sheer, glancing quality of his lyricism and his offbeat yet exact dynamic of construction make this some of the most wonderful poetry ever. There is such depth here, both for the mind to grasp and the heart to love, that to begin Eliot is to begin walking an ever broadening highway: reassurance both of the ground beneath one's feet and the hazy horizon at the edge of the eye's range.

This book is the definitive collection of T.S. Eliot's work. It includes an amazing collection of poems, from the renowned "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," to "The Hollow Men" and everything in between. The poems are arranged, for the most part, in chronological order, in a manner that faciliates a better understanding of Eliot's growth as a writer. It also includes plays, including the famous "Murder in the Cathedral," about Thomas a Beckett and "Cocktail Party" and "Family Reunion," both of which are considered to be some of Eliot's best work. For all those cat-lovers, it includes the entire "Old Possum's Book of Cats." At the core of the book, the reader will find "The Four Quartets" which is considered by many to be the greates of all Eliot's work.