The Waste Land And Other Poems

First published in 1922, "The Waste Land" is T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, and is not only one of the key works of modernism but also one of the greatest poetic achievements of the twentieth century. A richly allusive pilgrimage of spiritual and psychological torment and redemption, Eliot's poem exerted a revolutionary influence on his contemporaries, summoning forth a rich new poetic language, breaking decisively with Romantic and Victorian poetic traditions. Kenneth Rexroth was not alone in calling Eliot "the representative poet of the time, for the same reason that Shakespeare and Pope were of theirs. He articulated the mind of an epoch in words that seemed its most natural expression." As influential as his verse, T.S. Eliot's criticism also exerted a transformative effect on twentieth-century letter, and this new edition of The Waste Land and Other Writings includes a selection of Eliot's most important essays. In her new Introduction, Mary Karr dispels some of the myths of the great poem's inaccessibility and sheds fresh light on the ways in which "The Waste Land" illuminates contemporary experience.

A superb collection of 25 works features the poet's masterpiece, "The Waste Land"; the complete Prufrock ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," "Mr. Apollinax," "Morning at the Window," and others); and the complete Poems ("Gerontion," "The Hippopotamus," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," and more). Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

A collection of T.S. Eliot’s most important poems, including “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” T. S. Eliot is one of the most important and influential poets of the twentieth century. His unique and innovative evocations of the folly and poetry of humanity helped reshape modern literature, with poems such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” included here, and most notable, the title poem, “The Waste Land,” his groundbreaking masterpiece of postwar decay and redemption. Since its publication in 1922, “The Waste Land” has become one of the most widely studied modernist texts in English literature. Gathering together many of Eliot's major early poems, distinguished Harvard scholar and literary critic Helen Vendler presents an invaluable portrait of T. S. Eliot as a young poet and examines the artistry and craft that made him a Nobel laureate and one of the most significant voices in modern verse.

A Vintage Classics edition of T. S. Eliot's most groundbreaking poems "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper." Those famous concluding lines of T. S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" have resonated with readers for nearly a century. As with "April is the cruelest month," from The Waste Land and "Do I dare disturb the universe?," from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot's words have permanently entered our cultural bloodstream. Through the poems in this volume, representing his first four published collections, Eliot reshaped modern literature with a daring and overpowering vision of a decaying civilization and the urgent need for spiritual renewal.

Newly revised and in paperback for the first time, this definitive, annotated edition of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land "includes as a bonus""all the essays Eliot wrote as he was composing his masterpiece. Enriched with period photographs, a London map of cited locations, groundbreaking information on the origins of the work, and full annotations, the volume is itself a landmark in literary history. "More than any previous editor, Rainey provides the reader with every resource that might help explain the genesis and significance of the poem. . . . The most imaginative and useful edition of "The Waste Land" ever published."--Adam Kirsch, "New Criterion ""For the student or for anyone who wants to get the maximum amount of information out of a foundational modernist work, this is the best available edition."--"Publishers Weekly"

The Waste Land (1922) is a poem by T.S. Eliot. After suffering a nervous breakdown, Eliot took a leave of absence from his job at a London bank to stay with his wife Vivienne at the coastal town of Margate. He worked on the poem during these months before showing an early draft to Ezra Pound, who helped edit the poem toward publication. The Waste Land, dedicated to Pound, includes hundreds of quotations of and allusions to such figures as Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Saint Augustine, Chaucer, Baudelaire, and Whitman, to name only a few. Divided into five sections—“The Burial of the Dead;” “A Game of Chess;” “The Fire Sermon;” “Death by Water;” and “What the Thunder Said”—The Waste Land is a complex poem that translates Eliot’s fragile emotional state and increasing dissatisfaction with married life into an apocalyptic vision of postwar England. The poem begins with a meditation on despair before moving to a polyphonic narration by figures on the theme. The third section focuses on death and denial through the lens of eastern and western religions, using Saint Augustine as a prominent figure. Eliot then moves from a brief lyric poem to an apocalyptic conclusion, declaring: “He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience.” Both personal and universal, global in scope and intensely insular, The Waste Land changed the course of literary history, inspiring countless poets and establishing Eliot’s reputation as one of the foremost artists of his generation. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

Certain of these poems first appeared in Poetry, Blast, Others, The Little Review, and Art and Letters. Contents: Gerontion; Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar; Sweeney Erect; A Cooking Egg; Le Directeur; Melange adultere de tout; Lune de Miel; The Hippopotamus; Dans le Restaurant; Whispers of Immortality; Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service; Sweeney Among the Nightingales; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; Portrait of a Lady; Preludes; Rhapsody on a Windy Night; Morning at the Window; The Boston Evening Transcript; Aunt Helen; Cousin Nancy; Mr. Apollinax; Hysteria; Conversation Galante; La Figlia Che Pianga.

Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) is a collection of poems by T.S. Eliot. Published following the successful appearance of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Prufrock and Other Observations established Eliot’s reputation as a leading English poet and pioneering literary Modernist. Opening with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the collection begins with an invocation of Dante, whom Eliot saw as an important innovator of a polyphonic, referential poetry capable of interrogating and dramatizing the construction and representation of the self. The poem is written from the perspective of a repressed, despairing middle-aged man who meditates on his relationships with women and the regrets he has accumulated with age. In “Preludes,” a poem of urban malaise, Eliot “thinks of all the hands / That are raising dingy shades / In a thousand furnished rooms,” and reaches for an understanding of the world as “some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing.” Other poems include “Morning at the Window,” another brief vision of city life, “The Boston Evening Transcript,” a satirical reverie on time and community, and “Cousin Nancy,” a humorous lyric celebrating Miss Nancy Ellicott, who unabashedly “smoked, / And danced all the modern dances. Both personal and universal, global in scope and intensely insular, Eliot’s poetry changed the course of literary history, inspiring countless poets and establishing his reputation as one of the foremost artists of his generation. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

A collection of poems, some of which had first appeared in Poetry, Blas, Others, The Little Review, and Arts and Letters.