On my AS level English course I had the opportunity to study a few of the poems of TS Eliot... I loved it.
Now, obviously, I was approaching the poems from the slightly biased point of view of a hardcore CATSfan who was determined to like these poems come what may... Maybe that affected me just a bit, but... well, what can I say, I did really, really like them, anyway.
They are not all easy to understand at first (and bits remain impossible to understand after 80 years of study, but I just find that highly amusing and I'm sure Eliot would too ^^ More about that later.) But nor are they impossible for anyone to read and enjoy!
As this is a CATS page I can once again come from an obsessed-fan's point of view! Hoorah! Sooo, that means I can also do what I did as soon as I got a copy of Collected Poems... go through and highlight all the lines that were used in some way in CATS!!!
I like TS Eliot and his poems because they inspired CATS. I like them because they can be poignant, funny and often a wonderfully banale combination of the two. I like because they are pompous sometimes. I like them for their darkness and confusion and evocations of the city and people's lives. I like them for their discussions of faith, for the acceptance of God but the honesty that it is not always easy. I like them because some bits suddenly come clear. I like them because other bits don't. Ever. I like the way he is laughing at the world, and at all these academics trying to make sense of his references. I love his 'notes' on The Wasteland! I like TS Eliot's poems because they are absurdly human in a way very few people manage to convey ^_^
- this page is very much a work in progress! things will be added now and then maybe!
Soo! These are the poems I studied, of which my favourites were Rhapsody On A Windy Night and The Hollow Men... possibly the depressing-est ones, oops! ...And The Wasteland... And Prufrock too, which I recommend starting with because it's probably the easiest and I have some nice notes on it ^_^
I'd also recommend reading out loud.
The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock
The Poem | Intro
/ Notes |
Preludes
The Poems | Intro / Notes | CATS
refs
Rhapsody On A Windy Night
The Poem | Intro / Notes | CATS
refs
The Hollow Men
The Poem | Intro / Notes
Portrait Of A Lady
The Poem | Intro / Notes |
The Wasteland
The Poem | Intro
/ Notes | Essays
Four Quartets I have not read properly and I'd need some serious work/help to understand it properly... but as you may know, this is where The Moments of Happiness comes from!
The Jourrney of the Magi I did not study as such, but it's another one I love. It's one of the most famous and certainly most accessible of his poems, and reeeead it!
La Figlia Che Piange (The Weeping Girl) And this is nothing to do with anything else, but I just like it very much.
And then, of course,
there is Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats ^_^
About which I probably don't need to say very much to you, but
about which I have the most fantastic quote:: "Sometimes,
while reading the Old Possum poems, I find myself wondering why
Eliot ever bothered writing Serious Poetry..." from here. See? Their excellence is well-remarked.
You can find all the poems (with a CONCORDANCE!! *dies*) at this site here.
About TS Eliot
You can get a biography a million places on the internet, if
you're interested. Try google. I don't think me listing out the
same facts is going to help very much! I think people tend to
overanalyse on this..... but I do think it is an idea to look
into what was happening in his life and in the world when he
wrote the poems, because artistic expression is to some degree
influenced by that. Anyway, certain important points (well, what
I think is important!) related to specific poems are with their
notes!
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About me/disclaimer
I'm a girl who did English A-Level who is not actually into overanalysing things - I'm not a big important Professor of English Lit. These notes are intended... well, just to have fun for one thing... and to introduce CATS fans to some other TS Eliot poems which I myself enjoyed. My ideas may be "wrong" - they're certainly not the only ideas out there! (but nor are they actually very radical, so you should be pretty safe ^^)
I'd like to thank my English teacher very much for introducing us to TSE so helpfully at AS... a lot of the ideas here are thanks to her! And thanks to all of my classmates who helped make English lessons so, um, animated last year... those were the days, eh?
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Links
The Deeper Meaning of Bustopher Jones - Well, I think this is hilarious ^__^ If you get that kind of thing...
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