T.S. Eliot

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Are there any fans of Eliot here?

I'm a big fan of his poetry, my favourites being The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land and The Hollow Men.

Yes!

I love "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," and the musical Cats too. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a cat person too.

Well I certainly am a big fan of Cats

Love his works!! !

I'm a fan, particularly I like Prufrock. Somewhere I heard a tape of him reading it, that was a stunner.

Great, which of his works is your favourite?

I studied Prufrock in English Lit class, I'm glad you like it too
Did you hear the tape online?

Right now the Hollow Men.

Another latest one I luv is Waste Land.

I think b/c these are things I'm experencing right now.

I like his most of his works because they aren't full of bafflegab and go somewhere to a point.

His stuff also reminds me of some of C.S. Lewis's work. They both make a point and yet question their point.

I think Eliot was the first punk I can see his influence in a lot of lyrics today, do you agree?

Oh yeah....the wasteland because this is how the world ends!!

Yes, I was thinking of that line in particular!
Some lines of The Waste Land too, "Madame Sosoritis" in particular and "I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled". That kind of narrative is emulated by musicians today.

I've never read
What is his style like?

Here's one of his most favourite poems, The Hollow Men:

Mistah Kurtz - he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

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

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men


II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Walking alone

At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together and avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom


Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the shadow
Life is very long



Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For thine is the

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

I'd comment on the guy's poetry, but then I'd have to say:

That wasn't what I meant at all.
That wasn't it at all.

I love T.S. Eliot. I remember when I read Prufrock, I thought this is how I witness myself in a social environment and how seemingly random visual and emotional cues make the social world both alluringly mysterious and severely detachable.

The Wasteland is just so dense (not pejoritively so). But beautiful in its own way, nonetheless.

Bands who sound like they're trying to emulate T.S. Eliot are probably really trying to emulate Bob Dylan or a songwriter influenced by Dylan. I think Dylan was the first music artist to bring that kind of verbosity into music. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Dylan absorbed Eliot's poems as he seemed to have a voracious appetite for literature.

But I agree that Eliot is quite punk for his time. It seems like he really wanted to suffocate the Romanticism of poets around him or before him.

Yes!

If you want to hear him reading his own poems:

The Waste Land:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZdcYdE7mME[/youtube]

Reading 'We Call This Friday Good':

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-9gcauuboc[/youtube]

Thanks for the videos, they were wonderful
Eliot had the most wonderful voice, I wish more people spoke like that nowadays.

aguales, I don't know much about Bob Dylan although I do agree with what you said about emulating him. The bands I was thinking of were more influenced by Rimbaud and other such poets as well as Eliot.