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Feb 06, 2011

Trevor rated it:

Eliot is such a pompous old fart, how could anyone not love him? When I was still in high school if you wanted to be in the group of people who had any pretensions as ‘intellectuals’ or whatever else it was we had pretensions of – Eliot was de rigueur. I know large slabs of this poem by heart and when I worked as a house painter would quote it at length at the top of my voice when I ran out of Irish songs to sing while I rolled the walls – which probably misses the point of the poem, but I lov More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2012

Janet rated it:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land...
________________
Retracing myself through the labyrinth of the Waste Land. Making an effort this time to read other sources, think about the project of making a mosaic out of a broken world.
___________________
Thank God for the Internet--really inspiring to read these dense works and then have access to such a myriad of supplemental sources. I've read this before and always got the gist and the music More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Christine rated it:

'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is one of those pieces of art that sustains me. I literally don't know who I would be without it. I have been reading and rereading that poem since I was about 17, and each time I read it, I come to understand it a little bit differently. It is of course, about death and aging, but also about place ('The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes/ The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes/ Licked its tongue into the corners of the More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Bruce rated it:

Although I have read “The Waste Land” a number of times, it has been a long time since I read it last, and I have never studied it very thoroughly, having become entranced with “Four Quartets” and devoted most of my time and attention to that magnificent poem. Reading TWL again now, I am once again impressed, however, with its imagery and wealth of allusions. Some of these allusions are ones I recognize, although many I do not. Nonetheless, I am impressed with its modernist mood of enervation More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Valerie rated it:

I once won 50$ for reciting The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is a coffee shop. Making this the only one of my books to pay for itself in a material way.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2012

Kelly rated it:

"There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu,
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They cal More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Caroline rated it:

On the plus side of this, the entire time reading it I could hear Nick Cave narrating the poetry, for whatever reason. Something about the tone of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" evoked good old Nick Cave for me, and it stuck throughout this collection. I wish that, alone, would have sold me on loving it (instead, now I'm listening to my collection of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on shuffle).

Sadly, despite some really amazing imagery and lines, I found this collection la More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Nicole rated it:

Please read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It is my favorite poem and it quite possibly changed my life. Never have I experienced a piece of literature that I have heard interpreted in so many different manners--this, in addition to my personal reading of Prufrock, has led me to believe that everyone can find themself in it on some level. Moreover, everytime I read it, I pick up a new piece of something...a glimmering something that had slipped past me times before. I am in lo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Anne rated it:

Right, so upon first reading the poem, I have to admit that I was very much not a fan. I still have my reservations about Eliot (and whether or not the whole poem was just snobbish pretentiousness), but I am easily swayed, and we had a brilliant lecturer for the poem. He was a tall stick of a Scotsman, but had the most amazing voice. It was like listening to the smell of porridge--all warm, soft, and hearty. He clearly was passionate about the poem, and his readings of passages really opened More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Krissa rated it:

Although I wouldn't usually recommend spending three months of your life focused on one poem, the three months of my college education where I did so with the Wasteland weren't for naught. I still love opening up this poem and choosing a passage and remembering how it felt to untangle one line from another, flipping back and forth between sections to see where those lines tied to others, and just marveling at the sheer manic genius of Eliot.

I mean, you could also go on vacation to Fr More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2012

Ben rated it:

I picked up a box set, Faber and Faber Poetry Essentials a number of months ago, and this collection by T. S. Eliot is just one of the entries in the ten box set. It is a small sampling of Eliot’s Collected Poems, including the most famous works – The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Ash Wednesday and Journey of the Magi amongst others.

I had not read much of Eliot before this – I knew The Waste Land, and perhaps that was it. I admit to enjoying this collection immensely More...

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Jan 02, 2012

Lettie rated it:

To read The Waste Land is to become comfortable with death. I read it every year, yes, usually in April. I love the language, the shifting voices from the near-comic, to mysterious, to threatening, to grand. Years ago I brought the poem to a table of friends. I read just the last section, What the Thunder Said, but I explained it before I read it. I described it as the death throes of the poem, and at the end there would be brief bursts from works throughout the ages -- sampling in the parl More...

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Dec 22, 2011

John rated it:

Admittedly I find reading material in odd places. I always kind of knew about T.S. Eliot from peripheral reading. But never really got into him until I was reading The Groucho Letters by Groucho Marx. One of the letter sequences was from and to Eliot. When Grouchos insisted on calling the poet Tom, my aversion to my assumed stuffiness of Eliot's work simply withered away. Not with a whimper either.

When Andrew Lloyd Webber later turned some of Eliot's poetry into Cats, I almost went More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Ellie rated it:

I have read T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land many times over the years. I've been reading it again over the holidays. Today, I read the annotated version, carefully reviewing the notes & notes on the notes (thanks to google) as well as listening to recordings on YouTube-including a wonderful version with female and male voices (Eliot himself along with Ted Hughes). After all that, I took a break (read something different). Then, I sat back and forgot everything I knew, put aside everything I thought More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 19, 2011

Jen rated it:

My lukewarm love affair with Eliot started in high school when I came across an excerpt from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" in high school. My first--and continuing--thought was, "This guy is so crazy he's awesome." Reading "The Waste Land" and the other nine poems collected here hasn't changed that thought. I will have to come out and say, though, that "The Waste Land" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" aren't my favorites. Per More...

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Jan 23, 2012

Darin rated it:

The whole enterprise of "liking" or "really liking" books on Goodreads feels profoundly stupid when you find yourself giving four stars to The Waste Land. I mean, it's beside the point to "really like" The Waste Land, isn't it? That's kind of like "liking" oxygen or music. They just exist, don't they?

Anyway, I will say that I read this to prepare for John Beer's book, and I came away with two insights: 1.) I'm much more interested in The Waste More...

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Aug 10, 2011

Julaine rated it:

I picked up this book realizing that despite being such a fan of Modernist literature, I had never actually read T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." The poem is filled with allusions. You could spend years analyzing every detail and studying every work referenced. I am always fascinated by these types of works that connect to so many writers before them, but I gained another fascinating perspective being that I read "The Waste Land" along with other poems by T.S. Eliot. This colle More...

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Feb 09, 2011

Brooke rated it:

This is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in Eliot's modernist poetry. I had the privilege of taking courses under the direction of Dr. Malamud and can unequivocally state that you could find no one else as enthusiastic and well-informed on the subject of Eliot than he. It was fascinating to hear him break down the layers of The Waste Land and the complete oeuvre of Eliot's work. Dr. Malamud's notes in this edition are quite helpful and if I recall correctly, there are translations in t More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Gretchen rated it:

Not sure of the date but around that time. My father gave me this for a birthday--I had only read the "cat" poems before this--very enjoyable and heart-wrenching at times.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 03, 2012

mzd rated it:

I have never taken an instant like to a poet before. Not even Dorothy Parker, whom I adored reading. I don’t know what it is about Eliot, but the language just grabs you and snogs you and holds you. I just kept going back over verses, again and again, because some of the writing is just so damn pleasurable. My love for Ash Wednesday was so strong and so immediate that half a day later I was in a bookshop thumbing through the complete works.

It’s a doomed love affair. I’m sure soon en More...

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Aug 05, 2011

Bigmuzz rated it:

i know that this is probably blasphemy but i wasn't swept away with this work like so many others have been. the fact that I am not much of a fan of poetry probably contributes a lot towards that (i read this solely because it was on my Recommendations page)...i suppose i just didn't "get" most of it. some parts were real good tho, especially the first poem "the love song of J. alfred prufrock" and "preludes". and on a side note...i like how most of these poems actu More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Prof. Mohamed rated it:

The Journey of the Magi by T.S.Eliot
T. S. Eliot is widely considered as the greatest poet of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his philosophical poem ‘The Waste Land’ which describes the meaninglessness of the modern civilization. The ‘Journey of the Magi’ is based upon a biblical story. It describes the journey of the three wise men so as to witness the birth of Jesus Christ. The word Magi is a permanent plural standing for the three wise kings of the east More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 22, 2011

Becky rated it:

3.5 stars

I have wanted to read The Waste Land since seeing various quotes taken from it strewn throughout Stephen King's works. My favorites are

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." and
"This is how the world ends / Not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Those quotes have always given me a little thrill when I see them mentioned in other books and novels, and they seemed to indicate to me that Eliot would be right up my alley, b More...

8 comments like

Feb 06, 2011

Alexis Komarov rated it:

I really liked this! At first I wasn't too sure, and I actually put off reading The Waste Land and Other Poems for a few months. Now I cannot even recall why I positively dreaded it, I think it was the long introduction that turned me away. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed the introduction, and if anything it got me excited to read T.S. Eliot's poetry.

I love artists that steal from each other to reconstruct what they've obtained from their artistic thievery. T.S. Eliot does More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Max rated it:

I'm Canadian, and as such, I'm not terribly familiar with American literature. So when my old acquaintance Kate had a black day planner with the line "April is the cruelest month" scrawled across the cover in red nail polish, I had no idea what it was from. I asked her, and she said, "T.S. Eliot," but she was quick to add that she had no idea why April was crueler than any other given month. Flash forward a few years, and I'm living in America, preparing for my Praxis II test More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Mari rated it:

The Wasteland is a constant companion of mine.

Sometimes, when I'm writing, I lose the story I'm trying to tell. The words stop. I look around to find that I'm no longer on the path I thought I was. Sometimes I'm on no path at all. I have to backtrack. I have to find a thread - even if it's connected to nothing else - and follow it back to a place that makes sense. From there, start the journey again.

One of the places that these threads consistently lead back to is Eliot More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Dustin rated it:

It is difficult to say quite how profoundly this book has affected my thought since I read it. I spent approximately a week straight immersing myself in every word of this collection, the margins are full of my scribbles.
"Love Song" is the best example I have found of an author using poetry to make an abstraction concrete. His carefully chosen imagery and masterful composing of fragments, an irony not only that eliot is aware of but that is central to the poem.
"Whisper More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Jensen rated it:

In keeping with the modernist unit we are delving into in english class, I decided to challenge myself by reading one of the most elusive, convoluted books I have ever seen. Though it took me a while to get through it, it was very rewarding when I did. This book represents an amalgamation of some of Eliot's greatest works; the sheer brilliance of his mastery of the english language resounds perpetually throughout the book. Eliot, as a typical modernist writer, incorporates an abundance of litera More...

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Nov 29, 2011

Aaron rated it:

I have to read The Waste Land on an annual basis, not because I feel I ought to, but because I am drawn to it again and again, always trying to draw up some light and hope from the gloom and madness of the poem. There's something deeply transcendent in it, as if T. S. Eliot discovered the meaning of the human experience, then sunk it with his drowned Phoenician.

Also, I need The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Mr. Appollinax in my life. I didn't realize I had needed them until I re More...

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Aug 06, 2011

Ioan rated it:

Immense, probably the most important poem of the 20th century.

'I will show you fear in a handful of dust'

Absolutely quality.

The most incoherent piece of literature of ever written

he has thrown away every convention ever worth

keeping in place in relation to a form that is reserved for the language of kings, lords and men of gentle birth.

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