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A review by notwellread
Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot
4.0
Surprise, surprise, Mr. Eliot has a way with words.
Somehow I had managed not to read any Eliot until now, but he is obviously pretty great. He clearly has a lot of value in an objective sense as a modern classic poet (and is hardly unrecognised in this regard) but I would definitely have to read more to see if he is ‘my’ sort of poet, though I think I have engaged pretty well with what I found here and would definitely still like to read his poetry in full as well as exploring his other contributions.
A few things that stood out to me were the juxtaposition of the cosmic and the mundane, the way established images can be used and developed to create entirely new ones, and the use of ideas in combination to express a greater idea about their relationship without any further need for explanation. I also noticed that the last line is often the best. My main concern with this collection is that I am sure there is plenty of subtext and deeper symbolic meaning that I have missed (and would probably need some sort of annotated edition to help me in this regard), but other reviewers have noted this problem and yet still said that this knowledge didn’t impair their enjoyment (and thus given the collection five stars anyway), so although it bothered me a bit and the thought distracted me and stopped me from being immersed in my reading I suppose it shouldn’t bother me as much as it actually does.
Somehow I had managed not to read any Eliot until now, but he is obviously pretty great. He clearly has a lot of value in an objective sense as a modern classic poet (and is hardly unrecognised in this regard) but I would definitely have to read more to see if he is ‘my’ sort of poet, though I think I have engaged pretty well with what I found here and would definitely still like to read his poetry in full as well as exploring his other contributions.
A few things that stood out to me were the juxtaposition of the cosmic and the mundane, the way established images can be used and developed to create entirely new ones, and the use of ideas in combination to express a greater idea about their relationship without any further need for explanation. I also noticed that the last line is often the best. My main concern with this collection is that I am sure there is plenty of subtext and deeper symbolic meaning that I have missed (and would probably need some sort of annotated edition to help me in this regard), but other reviewers have noted this problem and yet still said that this knowledge didn’t impair their enjoyment (and thus given the collection five stars anyway), so although it bothered me a bit and the thought distracted me and stopped me from being immersed in my reading I suppose it shouldn’t bother me as much as it actually does.