Scan barcode
a_file_cabinet's review against another edition
2.0
The poetry is beautiful, but the blazing antisemitism really took me out of it
mattinthebooks's review against another edition
5.0
Holy crap.
T.S. Eliot has my whole heart.
I know that poetry with a rhyming scheme is often looked down upon by more well-versed members of the poetry community, but I find that if it is done in a tasteful way I more often appreciate it than not. The themes of real life melding into Eliot’s headspace make for some beautiful verbiage. One of my personal favorites is
“Polyphiloprogenetive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window panes
In the beginning was the word.”
-the beginning of a brief poem about Eliot’s experiences on Sunday.
T.S. Eliot has my whole heart.
I know that poetry with a rhyming scheme is often looked down upon by more well-versed members of the poetry community, but I find that if it is done in a tasteful way I more often appreciate it than not. The themes of real life melding into Eliot’s headspace make for some beautiful verbiage. One of my personal favorites is
“Polyphiloprogenetive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window panes
In the beginning was the word.”
-the beginning of a brief poem about Eliot’s experiences on Sunday.
amnah_a's review against another edition
5.0
I usually try my best to separate the art from the artist but it proved a TAD difficult to divorce the age-obsessed, cynical-turned-spiritually-awakened male speakers in these poems from the poet that represents most of these depressing characteristics. The more bigoted I discovered this man was, the narrower my eyes grew to preserve my ignorance. How could I conceal my enjoyment of his beautiful, existential, sing-song words? How can I, a 20-year-old girl, relate so much to the most terrifying, unnecessary and pathetic of God's creations: a man having a midlife crisis?
Turns out that my silly little mind is easily seduced by words. These lines in particular won me over:
- Gerontion
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
- The Waste Land
- 'The Rock'
Wasn't a fan of the post-conversion poems... the mental-breakdown era was more to my taste
Turns out that my silly little mind is easily seduced by words. These lines in particular won me over:
[...] Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.'
- Gerontion
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; ...
- The Waste Land
'All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, [...]
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?'
- 'The Rock'
Wasn't a fan of the post-conversion poems... the mental-breakdown era was more to my taste
eren_reads's review against another edition
Despite gaining more understanding of these poems through reading literary essays, I still feel that it would be unfair for me to review this collection. Maybe I will return later when I am more well read.
_sal_'s review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
I don't read much poetry for many times the underlying meaning goes above my head and becuase of this it can become a pretty hard reading experience for me. This time it wasn't any different haha.
I think that through various means i have come to understand the general contextual meanings to some of Eliots poems but i always feel like there is something missing when it comes to my understanding of the work.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock we can read and feel a character who is struggling with old age and the consequences of trying to express the unconscious as many of his worries are simply non-existent, like the people laughing at his bald spot, thinning hair, thin legs. I think that after much examining this along with Gerontion are hauntingly melancholic poems that have so much to them other than the struggle of men and their grasp of their younger days.
The parts in The Waste land symbolize the four elements that to people in antiquity was the constituents to the known universe, The Burial of the dead being earth, The Fire Sermon, Death by water, and What the thunder said which can come to symbolize air. I think that perhaps the 2nd part The Game of Chess can come to symbolize who we as humans are but mere chess pieces in the waste land that is the world as seen through a catastrophic event such as World War 1, the scene to many of these elements.
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”
Just in this alone i feel like there is so much to dissect as April is commonly not known as the cruelest month and it goes to show that the life that you have led prior to reading something like this shapes the way in which you read it for as for me April is spring and spring is the beginning and sprouting of new life but for someone in World War 1 the snow was almost like hibernation, hiding all the corpses and horrors of the war underneath a Beautiful tremulous white.
I still think that i enjoyed this very much and look forward to reading other works.
I think that through various means i have come to understand the general contextual meanings to some of Eliots poems but i always feel like there is something missing when it comes to my understanding of the work.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock we can read and feel a character who is struggling with old age and the consequences of trying to express the unconscious as many of his worries are simply non-existent, like the people laughing at his bald spot, thinning hair, thin legs. I think that after much examining this along with Gerontion are hauntingly melancholic poems that have so much to them other than the struggle of men and their grasp of their younger days.
The parts in The Waste land symbolize the four elements that to people in antiquity was the constituents to the known universe, The Burial of the dead being earth, The Fire Sermon, Death by water, and What the thunder said which can come to symbolize air. I think that perhaps the 2nd part The Game of Chess can come to symbolize who we as humans are but mere chess pieces in the waste land that is the world as seen through a catastrophic event such as World War 1, the scene to many of these elements.
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”
Just in this alone i feel like there is so much to dissect as April is commonly not known as the cruelest month and it goes to show that the life that you have led prior to reading something like this shapes the way in which you read it for as for me April is spring and spring is the beginning and sprouting of new life but for someone in World War 1 the snow was almost like hibernation, hiding all the corpses and horrors of the war underneath a Beautiful tremulous white.
I still think that i enjoyed this very much and look forward to reading other works.
mcky1616's review against another edition
5.0
First piece of Elliot’s work that I’ve read and I can say with full honesty that this man deserves the hype. Ohmygod his mind is so effortlessly brilliant
elsayles's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
4.0
Short but good selection of poems