Today is the birthday of T.S. Eliot, born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888. At the age of 27, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), and at 34, wrote “The Waste Land” (1922). At the height of his career, when he was writing poetry, plays, and literary criticism, and serving as director of the British publisher Faber & Faber, he was the 20th century’s single most influential writer. He was dry and enigmatic, and he spoke very, very slowly. Yet, he loved the Marx Brothers and was said to harbor a weakness for squirting buttonholes and exploding cigars. Somebody once said to Eliot that most editors are failed writers. Eliot said: “Yes. So are most writers.”
via The Writer’s Almanac
Posts tagged “poetry”
They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnicsand perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped inlipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubswith feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised meand now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chickenfried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with themin that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,collecting two hundred dollars.
Faith Shearin, “Telling the Bees”, 2015
When I Was One-and-Twenty
A most excellent poem
I Meet My Grandmother in Italy
A beautiful poem
Negative Space
A beautiful poem
The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry;
The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy;
The books that people talk about we never can recall;
And the books that people give us, oh, they’re the worst of all.
Carolyn Wells (June 18, 1862 – March 26, 1942)
There’s no use in regret. You can’t change anything.
Your mother died unhappy with the way you turned
out. You and your father were not on speaking terms
when he died, and you left your wife for no good
reason. Well, it’s past. You may as well regret missing
out on the conquest of Mexico. That would have been
just your kind of thing back when you were eighteen:
a bunch of murderous Spaniards, out to destroy a
culture and get rich. On the other hand, the Aztecs
were no great shakes either. It’s hard to know whom
to root for in this situation. The Aztecs thought they
had to sacrifice lots of people to keep the sun coming
up every day. And it worked. The sun rose every day.
But it was backbreaking labor, all that sacrificing.
The priests had to call in the royal family to help,
and their neighbors, the gardener, the cooks… You
can see how this is going to end. You are going to
have your bloody, beating heart ripped out, but you
are going to have to stand in line, in the hot sun, for
hours, waiting your turn.
by Louis Jenkins, from Tin Flag: New and Selected Prose Poems