A review by steph_demel
Collected Poems, 1909-1962 by T.S. Eliot

5.0

T. S. Eliot is unequivocally my favourite poet and is, in my opinion, a genius. His poetry is deeply cerebral and almost obsessively inter-textual, drawing on a staggeringly wide range of literary and cultural references. Yet, for all his erudition, his is not merely a poetry of ideas; instead, his cold, sharp critiques of modernity are accompanied by a raw emotional intensity that transcends mere modernist disillusionment to become something akin to a deep spiritual anguish. Through all of this tumult, the effortless musicality of his verse, with its recurrent internal rhymes and aural richness, shines through, infusing both his disillusion and his anguish into a sharp-edged thing of fragile and fearful beauty. This collection has a permanent place of honour on my nightstand.