T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (The Centenary Edition)
by T. S. Eliot

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Book Reviews of T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (The Centenary Edition)

Book Review: A diamond mine
Summary: 5 Stars

THE WASTE LAND
One of T.S. Eliot's bestknown poems. What I am feeling is more an impression than a meaning. The world is old, like coming to its end, decaying. The poet sees and only sees. It is soundless and yet it is music. He brings together all sorts of recollections, experiences and small vignettes of the world, and a whole array of references to all kinds of cultures to show how the past is foregone and the future is not there. There remains only the thunder that speaks unaudible sounds of farewell on a road we cannot even see, nor follow as for that.

THE HOLLOW MEN
It is the end of the world, and this is nothing but a whimper because men are hollow. They do not contain anything. They are ghosts of history, so that history itself is a ghost and the world has no future. This poem is extremely and astoundingly modern indeed. NO FUTURE.

ASH WEDNESDAY
This poetry is entirely dedicated to death, but also to the time between birth and death, a time of turning, a time that is felt like flying, going, flowing but there is no word, no world able to whirl any sound. Men are like living deads, already dead and moving towards death with no hope, except maybe the hope of God, but God is silent, so there is the only consolation of the Lady who is also silent and comes only after death to stare more than anything else.

CHORUSES FROM « THE ROCK »
« Where is the Life we have lost in living ? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge ? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information ? » These choruses are entirely dedicated to God, but with some original approach. What is important is what comes from God. God is light, but a light that is invisible and it is this invisible light that must help us never to forget that man is spirit and body, just like the Temple, and that the spirit suffers when the body suffers. And the body does suffer a lot in our mechanical times. The body is split in myriads of individuals who do not think the body as one, and society as one, and this oneness as communion with the light of God, an invisible light in a time when touching is the proof of existence.

FOUR QUARTETS
By far the crowning of T.S. Eliot's poetry. The evanescent equilibrium point between a whole set of couples of antagons. The present is such a point, but demultiplied by a myriad of other couples. Past-Future, Has-been-Might-have-been, and this point is movement, constantly moving between those antagons. It gives you a vertigo, the vertigo we feel in front of the present that is a constantly moving equilibrium point. Fascinating. Men are no longer hollow but they are unstoppable motion. They are some light, fine and fuzzy moving line between all the antagons of human nature, of nature as for that. Then a long and rich metaphor of life with the sea, neverending movement that ignores past and future but is pure present and nothing else. Men and women can only worship this everlasting present motion, time and place that is no time, no place and no motion, just unstable energy burnt in its own existence.

OLD POSSUM'S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS
A set of nice and musical poems on various cats. They are enchanting and light and every rhyme is the best, each one better than all the others. A little book to be given to boys and girls who do not know yet that language is art and speaking may be a compliment to their lives.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Summary of T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (The Centenary Edition)

There is no more authoritative collection of the poetry that Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965.

Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) to Four Quartets (1943), and includes such literary landmarks as The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

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