/lit/ - Literature

>T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965), the 1948 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the giants of modern literature, highly distinguished as a poet, literary critic, dramatist, and editor and publisher. In 1910 and 1911, while still a college student, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and other poems that are landmarks in the history of literature. In these college poems, Eliot articulated distinctly modern themes in forms that were both a striking development of and a marked departure from those of 19th-century poetry. Within a few years he had composed another landmark poem, “Gerontion” (1920), and within a decade, one of the most famous and influential poems of the century, The Waste Land (1922). While the origins of The Waste Land are in part personal, the voices projected are universal. Eliot later denied that he had large cultural problems in mind, but, nevertheless, in The Waste Land he diagnosed the malaise of his generation and indeed of Western civilization in the 20th century. In 1930 he published his next major poem, Ash-Wednesday, written after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. Conspicuously different in style and tone from his earlier work, this confessional sequence charts his continued search for order in his personal life and in history. The culmination of this search as well as of Eliot’s poetic writing is his meditation on time and history, the works known collectively as Four Quartets (1943): Burnt Norton (1941), East Coker (1940), The Dry Salvages (1941), and Little Gidding (1942).

I do love Eliot

Didn't he get bullied by Hemmingway?
Seemed hilarious.

I didn't like Elliott until I watched a few lectures on YouTube. Really opened my eyes.

>>19933375
lol

>>19933253
What is 'poetic' about that stuff?

>>19933783
What's wrong with it? It's a modernist play on the Spensarian stanza (9 lines that end with an Alexandrine) and uses some phonaesthetic devices even if largery written in free verse.

I like the imagery: damp souls sprouting; brown waves of fog tossing twisted faces; smiles hovering in the air and vanishing among the roofs.

"I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids/sprouting despondently at area gates" is absolutely incredible. The rest of the poem is great as well. Eliot was a gifted poet. I recommend you anons read Murder in the cathedral

>>19934957
>Murder in the cathedral
interesting

>>19933253
Hey OP,
I like reading these every day but am too ignorant of poetry to make any worthwhile comment. Sorry.

>>19933253
stop posting vers libre frauds

T.S. Eliot is timeless. It's incredible and inspiring how much his imagery has persisted as a contemporary inspiration inspite of structure going to the wayside.

why did this guy write this impressively but also write a bunch of horrible cat bullshit

>>19934957
>absolutely incredible
why i don't get it

>>19936511
>has persisted as a contemporary inspiration
That's not something to be proud of

>>19936533
>I don't get it

You do, you just find it boring/it doesn't resonate with you. That diesn't mean you don't understand poetry, just that Eliot isn't to your taste.

>>19936542
It is if you're actually well read and have kept up with poetry.

>>19936556
Okay list 5 good contemporary poets

>>19936626
me
my main heteronym
my other heteronym
my other heteronym
my other heteronym

>>19936633

>>19936626
>Adam Aitken
>Nathan Sherpardson
>Sarah Holland-Batt
>Jane Gibian
>Sandra Mcpherson
>David Berman
>Sean Kilpatrick
>Petrit Halilaj
>Joyelle McSweeney
>Richard Siken
>Julie Chevalier
>Ben Marcus
>Joanne Burns
>Leslie Scalapino
>Dianne Williams
>John Kinsella

Okay now you list the last five contemporary poets you've read.

>>19936659
>Adam Aitken
Great start of the list anon

>>19936659
>Nathan Sherpardson
Amazing

>>19936659
>Sarah Holland-Batt
This is the first one that is readable

>>19936855
Thats the wrong guy lol

>>19936659
>Sandra Mcpherson
And back to garbage. Thanks for proving my point.

>>19936842
Yeah I don't really like this piece desu. He has some good ones in revenents

>>19936872
I highly rec both of her books if you enjoyed that
>>19936880
You're judging most of these poets on the poems they've published while in college instead of their actual releases.

>>19936659
Holy fuck you brainlet

>>19936901
Have you got better recs?

>>19936872
This is good, didn't know but when reading I could tell she was Australian somehow, it's got such a sense of the place

>>19933253
I love the second stanza. Thanks for sharing a lesser-known Eliot poem, OP.
>>19936659
>>David Berman
Based. Pic related is one of my favorites of his.

>>19937121
I love Berman so much bro. Do you have that link to all of his unpublished stuff an anon posted?

>>19937133 (check'd)
>Do you have that link to all of his unpublished stuff an anon posted?
It's called The Colonial Manuscript. You can find it through a search engine. I would link it directly but it's a Google Doc, and I don't want to inadvertently dox myself.
There's also a website (http://dcbuncollected.net/)) that has links to a lot of different poems, videos, and prose pieces. There may be some overlap between the two.
Actual Air is so good it's unreal.

>>19937240
Oh I was just checking in case you didn't have the link. I'm all over it, and have a bunch of his fav poetry books on their way. Actual Air is incredible. It's made it to "the pile". Books that I will never get sick of and can reread endlessly.

>>19937252
Oh lol. Maybe a lurker will appreciate it.
I've read from Actual Air probably 2/3rds of the days this winter. Something keeps calling me back to it.
On the subject of Berman's favorite poetry books, have you read Kenneth Koch? I think he's great and quite funny, too. Berman always cited him as a big influence.

>>19937376
I haven't yet, but they're on their way. I'm really excited for them. Glad to have encountered someone else that appreciates his work as much as I do

>>19937121
I'm just thankful I don't have to read contemporary "poetry".