Also includes Prufrock and Other Observations, Poems (1920), and The Sacred Wood Introduction by Mary Karr First published in 1922, “The Waste Land,” T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece, is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot’s poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a potent new poetic language. As Kenneth Rexroth wrote, Eliot “articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression.” As commanding as his verse, Eliot’s criticism also transformed twentieth-century letters, and this Modern Library edition includes a selection of Eliot’s most important essays.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9780375759345
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication Date: 01-08-2002
Pages: 272
Product Dimensions: 5.10(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.59(d)
Series: Modern Library Classics
About the Author
Mary Karr is an award-winning poet, essayist, and memoirist. She is also the author of four books of poetry, Abacus, The Devil’s Tour, Viper Rum, and Sinners Welcome, and three memoirs, The Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit.
Read an Excerpt
Read an Excerpt
Portrait of a Lady
Thou hast committed Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. The Jew of Malta.
I Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself as it will seem to do With I have saved this afternoon for you; And four wax candles in the darkened room, Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid. We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.
And so the conversation slips Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins Mingled with remote cornets And begins.
You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, [For indeed I do not love it . . . you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!] To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you
Without these friendships life, what cauchemar! Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite false note.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments, Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
How to Read "The Waste Land" So It Alters Your Soul Rather Than Just Addling Your Head
ix
The Waste Land and Other Poems
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
3
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
3
Portrait of a Lady
8
Preludes
12
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
14
Morning at the Window
16
The Boston Evening Transcript
16
Aunt Helen
17
Cousin Nancy
17
Mr. Apollinax
18
Hysteria
19
Conversation Galante
19
La Figlia Che Piange
20
Poems (1920)
22
Gerontion
22
Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar
25
Sweeney Erect
26
A Cooking Egg
28
Le Directeur
29
Melange Adultere de Tout
30
Lune de Miel
30
The Hippopotamus
31
Dans Le Restaurant
32
Whispers of Immortality
33
Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service
35
Sweeney Among the Nightingales
36
The Waste Land
38
The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism
Introduction
59
The Perfect Critic
64
Imperfect Critics
76
Tradition and the Individual Talent
99
The Possibility of a Poetic Drama
109
Euripides and Professor Murray
117
"Rhetoric" and Poetic Drama
123
Some Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe