The Voice Of the Poet

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) was the most influential poet of the twentieth century. He wrote with care and did not publish often, but his major poems struck readers like lightning. His early masterpiece, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," summarized the romantic longings and diminished expectations of modern man, and launched him at once as an avant-garde poet of the first rank. Then, in 1922, "The Waste Land" exploded onto the scene, a dazzling and difficult poem that dramatized the rootless state of humanity, mixing personal revelation with the ruins of culture to create the most famous poem of the century. Later in his career, "Four Quartets" offered a soaring sacramental vision of history. All these landmarks are represented in this remarkable new collection, in Eliot's own definitive readings. Here is the voice that changed and shaped modern poetry in ways that still resonate profoundly.