Selected Poems

There are no poetic subjects in this book, no conventional nightingales and daffodils, and there is no acceptance, either, of the traditional rules of metre and rhyme. As one discerning critic has said: We have here, in short, poetry that expresses freely a modern sensibility, the ways of feeling and the modes of experience of one fully alive in his own age.The main poem in this collection is The Waste Land (1922) to which Mr. Eliot has himself supplied some revealing footnotes which help the reader to cope with the associations and allusions in which the poem is so rich. His theme here, as in most of his other poems, is disillusion with our contemporary civilization, which he contrasts in several of its aspects with the beliefs and practices of other and earlier races. It is a difficult poem to follow and even Mr. Eliots own sign-posts are sometimes cryptic.