Collected Poems – TS Eliot

I loved the surprises and the symbols. The lilting music. The audacious proposition and the firm pace. The exploratory purposiveness. If most of the classical allusions were lost on me (I still find quite a lot of Eliot just too clever), I could still appreciate the collapsing of time, joining ancient figures to the modern in constellations of grimy London, Margate juxtaposed with Carthage like tragedy in a music hall, images grabbed from all over the world mind.
 
The lyricism that best spoke to and for me was rooted in the city. Windows and horses, beer and fog, Eliot finding weird beauty while seeking with his pen to pin down answers from the spirit worlds of his intellect, from windswept cultural landscapes of forlorn life, in words.
 
I can still get taken up by these bold, clean, stylish poems that sit restless on the page, waiting and wanting to be read out loud and sing.
 
Let me put this in your mind: read The Hollow Men and imagine it being declaimed by Jim Morrison in that fierce, passionate delivery of his. It sure as hell works for me.