The T. S. Eliot Page

"`I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.` What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the `Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.` Here's another one. `In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"

- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

This is a collection of stuff about this modern American poet.(He probably would like to be called an English poet instead).

As you can see, this is DEFINITELY under some major construction. I havent the time now to put in all the links; but I will as time goes by, so do check back here occasionally to see if something has changed. If you can offer your help, or if you know other materials on-line that I should include in here, please mail me {i.e. Bruce Bong}. Thankyou!

The Eliot Cluster

The T. S. Eliot cluster: Here is a list of books I'd recommend to people who want to know more about Eliot's works, and some personal thoughts on his poetry and his life. So if you are curious about Eliot, this might be good for you. (Besides, it's a piece of my writing that doesnt stink too bad.)

Mailing List and Discussion Groups

There is a mailing list for T. S. Eliot related discussions. Click here for information on how to join, etc.

Other Eliot Related information on the web

Click here if you want to search the web on other Eliot related information.
A tribute to T. S. Eliot. From an excellent on-line literary magazine, THE SALT SPRING ISLAND TATLER .

Biography

A short bio on line from Washington University at St. Louis' Walk of Fame.
What the Thunder Said - from University of Southwestern Louisiana's English Department.
T. S. Eliot, a life - biography by Peter Ackroyd

Poems

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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Allusions and Sources: Shakespeare's Hamlet; Greek Myths
Criticisms: Heather Tidrick's essay (if she sends it to me over the summer)
Other works that allude to this poem (seriously): Grateful Dead's song, Stella Blue by Robert Hunter (one of my favorite songs).
Parodies: The Love Song of J. Random Hacker from Jeff Duntemann. This is a brilliant parody!; The Love Song of Bret Easton Ellis (from Dennis Woo's lit rumble); The Love Song of J. Alfred Hotrock. (from Glenn Baker on AOL.); T. S. Eliot interactive by Michael Rubiner, from New York Times.; A Prufrockian Quiz! by me, based on Michael Rubiners work.; April '95 issue of New Yorker, in which a cartoon parody titled, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Crew" appears, that makes fun of the J. Crew crowd. [I need to scan it in]; The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler; I am working on an HTML hypertext version of Prufrock: basically, I am not making modifications to the poem, but by adding hyperlinks to key words I hope to create, for the reader, a comic farce of the poem in hyperspace. For example, for the lines Let us go then, you and I,as the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherised upon a table..., it'd be fun to link 'spread' and 'etherised' to some Freudian stuff. (Say no more.. Say no more...wink wink.. What was it like?) :); ...Well. Somebody beat me to it. She did a great job, too. Click here to see what I mean...
Other literary works which allude to this poem (seriously): "The Adventure of Change" - a speech by Robert F. Kennedy. It is published in "Profiles in Courage" - a collection of speeches by RFK. RFK calls the lines That is not what I meant at all, / That is not it, at all. the "Hollow apology of T.S. Eliot." (thanks to Mr. Andy Limeri for the source).

Preludes

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The Journey of the Magi

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The Waste Land

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A recording of Eliot's own reading of this poem
Allusions and Sources: From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston.; The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer; Inferno by Dante
Criticism: What William Carlos Williams said about the poem when it was first published
Parodies: The Waste Land by Martin Rowson - a comic book parody. See my T.S.Eliot cluster for more on this book.; Waste Land Limericks by Wendy Cope -- pretty funny
Other literary works which allude to this poem (seriously): BridesHead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Some Northern Exposure episodes; Grateful Dead's song: The Wheel; The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler: Then there is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can't lay a finger on her because in the first place you don't want to and in the second place she is reading The Waste Land or Dante in the original, or Kafka or Kierkegaard or studying Provincial....

The Hollow Men

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Parodies
Allusions and Sources: The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; La Divina Commedia by Dante
Other literary works which allude to this poem (seriously): Bob Dylan made a reference to the poem in his song, "dignity"; The Movie, Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola, in which Captain Kurtz recited lines from this poem.

Ash Wednesday

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Four Quartets

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Criticism: Heather Tidrick's essay on the first part of Burnt Norton

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

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Last modified 96-03-02. This page is not official NeXT information.