Customer Reviews

The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I found this edition by Penguin to be very useful for a casual reading. The notes on the poems, in particular "the Waste Land," are detailed enough to give the reader a perception of Eliot's vast literary knowledge and its effect on his poems. However, the notes are inadequate if your purpose is to deeply understand the background of Eliot's complex and difficult poetry. So if you are looking for deep insights, I would recommend the Norton Critical Edition. For the normal reader, this is satisfying and straightforward.

The Waste Land

From the listing this item appears to be a recording of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, read by the poet himself; but it's not, it's a performance by another reader, and therefore it had (to me) no interest; it was not what I wanted or needed. I suggest that the product description should be made clearer, so that other customers do not make the same mistake.

T.S. Eliot wrote "The Waste Land" against the backdrop of a world gone mad-- searching for reason inside chaos, and striving to build an ark of words by which future generations could learn what had gone before, T.S. Eliot explores that greatest of human melancholy-- disillusionment. This is a difficult poem, but one well-worth exploring to its fullest. The inherent rhythms of Eliot's speech, the delightful, though sometimes obscure, allusions, and intricate word-craft, create an atmosphere of civilization on the edge-- in danger of forgetting its past, and therefore repeating it. In the end, only the poet is left, to admonish the world to peace, to preserve the ruins of the old life, and to ensure that future generations benefit from the disillusions of the past.

"Prufrock" is perhaps the best "mid-life crisis" poem ever written. In witty, though self-deprecating and often downright bitter, tones, Eliot goes on a madcap but infinitely somber romp through the human mind. This is a poem of contradictions, of repression, of human fear, and human self-defeat. Technically, "Prufrock" is brilliant, with a varied and intricate style suited to the themes of madness, love, and self-doubt.

Buy this. You won't regret it. If you're an Eliot fan, you probably have it anyway. If you're not, you will be when you put it down.

I remember when I first read through some parts of 'The Wasteland' when I was a teenager. I basically didn't get any of it, yet there was something that vividly burned itself in my mind. All that I could remember from the first reading was the departure of some nymphs and wind crossing brown land, a slimy rat's belly dragging across a bank, and some sailor on the bed of the sea being picked apart by a deep sea current. But it wasn't just the images that stuck; there was something else. What stuck, I think, is the 'visionary' quality some people refer to as being 'cinematic'. The writing in the poem has a way of getting you to view a whole assortment of apparently disconnected events as though you were a disembodied spirit -unnoticed, but there, listening in. I've read the poem quite a few more times since then, and you begin to notice the overall structure. When the poem gets to the last part, 'What the Thunder said', there is this transition that is at once magnificent, sobering, yet somewhat hallucinatory and disturbing. This part always gets me:

"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?"

'The Wasteland' is perhaps the least 'telly' of Eliot's work. I've come to appreciate more and more 'The Four Quartets' over any other of his works, but 'The Wasteland' remains the one poem of his that is the most tight, the one that gets across its business to the reader superbly, showing and not telling, while at the same time being the work of art that was the departure from the 'antiquated' verse, a whole new aesthetic that was no mere aesthetic, but was totally viable and worked and was vivid.

While many of the other poems in this book are well worth reading, I'm not sure 'The Love Song of Prufrock' really belongs. I don't understand how that one always gets bundled into books containing 'The Wasteland' and Eliot's other poems, which are far superior to 'Prufrock'. To my mind 'Prufrock' has not held up over the years. It marks the experiment that Eliot was to take over the years to betterment. It had its glory in his day, but I can't help feeling the poem is really not all that good.

I don't know what the description of the book is referring to or what the other reviewers are talking about. This is just the text of The Waste Land, with no notes, no translations of the parts that aren't in English and no other poems. It isn't even formatted correctly - there are a handful of notes that have been left in the text of the poem. This is a poem with a lot of layers to it and some explanation is standard. This edition has none. Do yourself a favor and don't buy it.

I only spent 49 cents on this but I still feel ripped off.

I'm very pleased with this edition.

I'm reading The Waste Land for a class and am happy to report that the stanza formatting has been retained, the Table of Contents is linked to the individual poems, and the superscripts link to the actual notes.

I loaded my T.S. Eliot Reads The Waste Land onto my Kindle, and it's really neat following along with his reading.

The Introduction, Suggestions for Further Reading, and Brief Chronology are also greatly appreciated.

VERY well spent $2.50!!

Probably no twentieth century poet has had a more profound or lasting influence than T. S. Eliot. Poets like Ezra Pound began moving away from Victorian formalism before, but works like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" changed the very idea of what poetry could be so dramatically and thoroughly that the medium has never since been the same. Eliot definitively proved that none of the poetic devices that had dominated English poetry for centuries - rhyme, regular meter, etc. - were necessary. He could deploy them at least as well as any poet of his age but was more famous and influential for boldly dropping them in favor of a truly modern style masterfully reflecting twentieth century uneasiness and uncertainty. Eliot steered poetry away from its historical tendency to focus on relatively light subjects suited for lyricism - nature, love, etc. - toward philosophical and other complex issues, proving that it could be as substantial a medium for such things as any other. He also had a vast influence in other ways, not least in making poetry - and, indeed, literature - more densely allusive than ever and thus less accessible. The incredible popularity of nineteenth century English poets like Lord Byron and Alfred Tennyson could never really happen again, as he pioneered what became known as high art. Under his influence, poetry - and, to a large extent, literature itself - became ever more obscure and challenging and, for better or worse, read by fewer and fewer people. It is no exaggeration to say that every poet who has written in English since - as well as many other languages - has had to deal with Eliot in various ways, especially The Waste Land. He has been imitated numerous times but never equaled and also lead many to deliberately write in an anti-Eliot manner. As all this suggests, Eliot remains controversial. To many, he is the twentieth century's greatest poet without question and one of the greatest ever, responsible for a much-needed turn from overly formal and intellectually shallow Victorian poetry. To perhaps at least as many, he is overblown and overrated, pretentious and portentous, responsible for ruining all that was great about pre-Modern poetry. He evokes few indifferent reactions; almost everyone either takes to him immediately, finding him prophetic and indisputably great, or is simply puzzled and overwhelmed. Anyone even remotely interested in poetry thus must read him and decide.

There are untold numbers of Eliot collections, but no other has such incredible value. It has a generous selection - twenty-five poems -, from his first (1917) collection, his 1920 book, and The Waste Land. This includes most of his best-known work: "Prufrock," "The Waste Land," "Sweeney among the Nightingales," "Gerontion," "Portrait of a Lady," etc. Essentially, all the major poems are here except the Four Quartets. These exact poems - or fewer - are available in numerous more expensive editions, but one can get them here for practically nothing. To have so many poems, especially such important ones, in a single edition for such a small price is almost beyond belief.

That said, as one would expect from the price, it is bare bones. Like most Dover Thrift Editions, it has no supplementary material other than a short biographical note. We also get Eliot's own notes to The Waste Land, here printed after the poem. This will not be a problem to those who want just the poetry, but Eliot's references are so many and often so obscure that a good number of readers, perhaps the majority, will want some kind of explanatory footnotes. Another significant drawback for most is that the few non-English poems are not translated, essentially cutting down on available poems. Some will thus require more expensive editions, and dedicated readers and critics certainly will. However, this is perfect for everyone else and the ideal place to start for neophytes. It may be difficult for first-time readers, but they will be able to tell almost immediately if Eliot is for them. If so, the door will be open to further reading; if not, they will have spent very little.

The Waste Land, published in 1922 and considered one of the major works associated with modernism. This poem deals despairingly with the state of post-World War I society, which Eliot saw as sterile and decadent. Numerous references to religious imagery, mythology and literature of the past are used ironically to point out the comparative emptiness of Eliot's time.

The Waste Land is sometimes considered to be the greatest poem of the twentieth century. This collection from Dover (at an amazing price) includes this and several other of Eliot's poems. The Waste Land, however, is considered to be his masterpiece, his 'epic,' in a sense. In fact, it is interesting to compare Eliot's bleak vision of a land of waste to other, earlier epics.

The poem is in some sense a warning, in another sense a cry of despair. The image of the wasted land, of the spiritually degenerate human race, is depressing, yet the poem ends with a glimmer (albeit faint) of hope--salvation is possible, however unlikely. I am no expert on this poem, and like most people understand only fragments of it, but what I have gained from the poem I have found to be very enlightening, and very stirring.

Eliot draws many references from the old legend of the Fisher-King, and an idea of what this legend is about (in all its many forms) is useful in interpreting the poem. This is undoubtedly one of the classics in both English literature and modernist writings, and very worthwhile for anyone who is willing to take the time to study it.

I think perhaps the wasteland has been to long interpeted as a lament, our a lecture, or even a statement about disillusioment. To me it seems to be the story of a non commital spiritualist lingering on the edge Nihilism, confused in pain and feeling empty as if no philosophy has prover satisfactory in his thirst for truth. I have known the morbid and dark mindstates Eliot describes, and I think that is what the wasteland is: a portrait of intense mental and spiritual torment, embellished with symbolism and shifting voices. But that is essentialy what it is, though each voice is distinct it seems to me that the torment of one man leaps between changing but always hinting that they are all his. It is in a way a dramatation of the utimate feelings of man between rationalism and Nihilism and hating both. Feeling that they are frauds and that the only truth is in the empty tired nothingness.