Author: T.S. Eliot
Title: Selected Poems
Genre: Poetry
Year: 1954
Pages: 120
Origin: a present from Mrs. W
Nod Rating: 5 nods out of 5
‘What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.’The above quote – from the hand of T.S. Eliot himself – is fitting of this paradoxical, puzzling and enigmatic poet. His work is synonymous with the twentieth century, from musings on the passing of time, to the chaos and disorder of a post-war world, and then onwards to his own religious conversion.
This collection was originally selected by Eliot himself and published in the 1950s; it has remained in publication, culminating in the Worm’s particular addition, printed as part of Faber’s eightieth anniversary celebrations (along with other poetic heavyweights such as Betjeman and Auden). It covers the most renowned and feted of Eliot’s catalogue, including poems from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash-Wednesday (1930), Ariel Poems, as well as selected choruses from his play The Rock (1934).
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ featured in an earlier book review this year (see below for the link); the Worm then highlighted the polarising opinions that Eliot’s work seems to evoke in readers: from prophet to pretentious poet, from ground-breaking to bore inducing. But yet this is a poet who continues to enjoy popular appeal, from undergraduate reading lists to even being referenced in an episode of The Simpsons. Prufrock contains the forever entertaining lines: ‘For I have known them all already, known them all / Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons / I have measured out of my life with coffee spoons.’ Eliot writing as a man (still of comparative youth) lamenting the passing of years, his own naivety and innocence.
Other early highlights include ‘Portrait of a Lady’, ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, and the celebrated ‘Gerontion’. The last, on first glance, continues with the Prufrock theme: ‘Here I am, an old man in a dry month / Being read to be a boy, waiting for rain.’ But deeper analysis offers different interpretations, possibly that of a man whose values have been destroyed by the advent of the Great War. Eliot writes of the areas of destruction: ‘Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London’; but concerning the individual on a personal level: ‘The word within a word, unable to speak a word.’ Meaning has shattered in pieces, with a loss remaining; the poem itself ending with the harrowing lines ‘Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.’
It is a theme returned to in greater detail in The Waste Land, perhaps the pinnacle of Eliot’s work. It is a poem of great sadness and bewildered ambition; the inclusion of an extensive notes section gives readers hope that sense can be found within its rambling words and pages. But perhaps sense is the one thing that can no longer be found in a world in which has changed beyond all recognition by war and revolution. As Eliot states in the first section (The Burial of the Dead):
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,The narrator (or should that be narrators?) attempts to continue onwards with life, but within the ‘Unreal city’ of London (now a falling tower), it is a hard to step forward into the darkness:
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock
‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.Confusion is central to the poem, with Eliot writing (in numerous voices) the pointlessness of life: ‘Do you know nothing Do you see nothing? Do you remember / Nothing?’ and ‘What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?’ The narrator, standing on Margate Sands, is unable to connect the old world with the new, ‘Nothing with nothing.’
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.’
This monumental poem concludes with Part V (‘What the Thunder Said’), in which Eliot writes: ‘He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying.’ The reader searches – in vain – for a resolution as to a full understanding; Eliot himself appears to hint at such fulfilment by listing a large list of references alluded to in the course of poem, both literary and historic (ranging from those of ancient Greece, to that of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester sailing on the Thames). But perhaps such understanding is, as the voices in the poem show, impossible to find. Eliot himself is hinting that the modern world has no use for an older language of references, and that a new lexicon is needed in order for fresh problems to be surmounted. The ending words of Sanskrit ‘Shantih Shantih Shantih’ allude to the death of the old world, rather than the key to unlocking the future.
Interestingly, Eliot himself appears to solve such problems by seeking truth and enlightenment internally, through religion. This development can be traced from The Hollow Men, again dealing with themes of alienation and confusion: ‘This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper’; and more crucially Ash Wednesday in 1930. Hailed as Eliot’s “conversion poem”, Ash Wednesday finds the poet in turmoil over which direction to proceed, as found in its opening lines:
Because I do not hope to turn againThe inclusion of sections of The Rock (first performed in 1934), is perhaps most intriguing. As expected, a narrative is hard to find, the beginning starting in typical Eliot-ian fashion:
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn.
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,Eliot himself wrote an apparent disclaimer to The Rock: ‘I cannot consider myself the author of the “play”, but only of the words which are printed here.’ It is the type of paradoxical language that infuriates the legions of Eliot detractors in the world; but perhaps that which embraces many more.
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
Such a collection – of the fantastic, puzzling and enjoyable – marks out T.S. Eliot has a supreme poet; not just one of high stature in the twentieth century, but of all time. As noted in the previous review, it is all too easy to dismiss him as a snob; it is far better - for the reading eyes and the soul – to embrace him as he is. The poems are a delight to read aloud, as well as to muse over. What is clear, having read the selection, is the interesting direction in which Eliot’s own choice of career took: from the outside who is up against the grain, to voicing concerns and the mood of a generation, to religious convert and the worthwhile works that resulted from this, to become an accepted part of the literary establishment. Selected Poems is the collection gathered on his own terms; its contents make for a fantastic addition to any bookshelf.
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Poems-Eliot-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0571247059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351541480&sr=8-1
Hear The Waste Land performed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP9taUtLlYQ
Read the review for Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) from July 2012:
http://4eyedbookworm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/prufrock-and-other-observations-ts.html
