SELECTED POEMS (utgåvan 1972)

Could be worth 5 stars for Prufrock alone, and what with Waste Land, Hollow Men, etc. it's got the best of Eliot - perhaps the best poet of the period. Pretty light collection. ( )

I first read TS Eliot at Uni nearly forty years ago and this is my Faber and Faber paperback study copy, complete with notes. It was interesting to revisit one of the great poets of the twentieth century and initially I was struck by the misanthropy (and anti semitism) of the early poems, however the later poems hauled me in with the beauty of the images and words and I mellowed towards the poet. There was still a certain disenchantment with humanity but also more sympathy with what it means to be a fallible human being. ( )

Poetry is just not my thing. I don't think I understood any of it. But that's just me. I really need to take a class to study T.S.Eliot's works, because I know he is a famous poet. I am just too ignorant to appreciate it ;) ( )

In general, my reading tastes are pulp-press-simple. I can neither appreciate, nor enjoy, nor, I admit, even understand, poetry. But Eliot is different, and I don't know why. I have very little understanding of what is going on in the poems themselves, but the lines that are so seeped in meaning and imagery and are so tangible that I can taste them as I read.

I remember having to analyse the first part of "The Waste Land" in high school, and, for once, hating the ponderous application of reason and logic and inference and analysis to something that, to me, stands outside and in some ways beyond meaning.
So I don't really analyse the poems. I just read them for those evocative lines.

A few of my favourites:

~~~~~~~ "The Hollow Men" ~~~~~~~
(Probably my favorite poem, incidentally, possibly because it is both haunting and interpretable.)

'This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.'

'Remember us--if at all--not as lost
violent souls, but only
as the hollow men'

'Shape without form, shade without colour
Paralysed force, gesture without motion'

'Eyes I dare not meet in dreams'

'in that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom'

'The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star'

'Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone'

'In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley'

'The hope only
Of empty men'

'Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the shadow'

~~~~~~~ "The Waste Land" ~~~~~~~

'A heap of broken images, where the sun beats'

'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'

'Looking into the heart of light, the silence.'

'Those are pearls that were his eyes.'

'Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn'

'And still she cried, and still the world pursues.'

'The river's tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank.'

'Where the dead men lost their bones'

'Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.'

'Throbbing between two lives'

'A current under sea
Pickled his bones in whispers.'

'Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison'

~~~~~~~The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock~~~~~~

'The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes'

'There will be a time to murder and create'

'I have measured my life with coffee spoons' ( )

I don't like poetry, but I liked this. I read it for sixth form, and Eliot's spiritual journey echoed mine. I recognised the words from the music of Cats, at the time I had no clue who inspired who. ( )