Product Description

 
Considered the most important poem of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an oblique and fascinating view of the hopelessness and confusion of purpose in modern Western civilization. Published in 1922—the same year as Joyce’s equally monumental Ulysses—The Waste Land is a series of fragmentary dramatic monologues and cultural quotations that crossfade into one another. Eliot believed that this style best represented the fragmentation of society, and his poem portrays a sterile world of panicky fears and barren lusts, and of human beings waiting for some sign or promise of redemption. Mirroring the destruction and disillusionment of World War I, The Waste Land had the effect of a bomb exploded in a genteel drawing room, just as its author intended.

This volume also includes Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and Poems (1919). Prufrock contains the poem that first put Eliot on the map, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in which the title character is tormented by the difficulty of articulating his complex feelings. Among other masterpieces, Poems features "Gerontion," a meditative interior monologue in blank verse—a poem like none before it in the English language.

 
Randy Malamud is Professor of English and Associate Chair of the department at Georgia State University. His specialty is modern literature, and he has written three books and numerous articles about T. S. Eliot.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1059380 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781593082796
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
After sitting through T.S. Eliot's reading of "The Waste Land," listeners may be inclined to hang up the earphones for a spell. There are no flaws to Eliot's steady-toned interpretation; in fact, his delivery is quite remarkable in its ability to match the poem's constant, somber mood. It's just that 25-plus minutes of Eliot's desolate landscapes--rendered even more real by the author's incessant tones--can wear on the emotions.

In addition to the full-length version of "The Waste Land," this recording includes Eliot's stirring narration of "The Hollow Men," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," and "Macavity the Mystery Cat." Listen to Eliot read from "The Waste Land." Visit our audio help page for more information. (Running time: 47 minutes, 1 cassette) --Rob McDonald

From Library Journal
Along with the two title pieces, this collection includes "Portrait of a Lady," "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," "Gerontion," and numerous other Eliot greats. To have these poems in a single volume that costs roughly the price of a candy bar is nothing less than a miracle. (Classic Returns, LJ 12/98)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Along with the two title pieces, this collection includes "Portrait of a Lady," "Rhapsody on a Windy Night," "Gerontion," and numerous other Eliot greats. To have these poems in a single volume that costs roughly the price of a candy bar is nothing less than a miracle.  (Library Journal )

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Customer Reviews

a good edition of Eliot for the casual reader
I found this edition by Penguin to be very useful for a casual reading. The notes on the poems, in particular "the Waste Land," are detailed enough to give the reader a perception of Eliot's vast literary knowledge and its effect on his poems. However, the notes are inadequate if your purpose is to deeply understand the background of Eliot's complex and difficult poetry. So if you are looking for deep insights, I would recommend the Norton Critical Edition. For the normal reader, this is satisfying and straightforward.

The Waste Land -- Audio CD -- www.bnpublishing.com
The Waste Land

From the listing this item appears to be a recording of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, read by the poet himself; but it's not, it's a performance by another reader, and therefore it had (to me) no interest; it was not what I wanted or needed. I suggest that the product description should be made clearer, so that other customers do not make the same mistake.

Not to be missed
I remember when I first read through some parts of 'The Wasteland' when I was a teenager. I basically didn't get any of it, yet there was something that vividly burned itself in my mind. All that I could remember from the first reading was the departure of some nymphs and wind crossing brown land, a slimy rat's belly dragging across a bank, and some sailor on the bed of the sea being picked apart by a deep sea current. But it wasn't just the images that stuck; there was something else. What stuck, I think, is the 'visionary' quality some people refer to as being 'cinematic'. The writing in the poem has a way of getting you to view a whole assortment of apparently disconnected events as though you were a disembodied spirit -unnoticed, but there, listening in. I've read the poem quite a few more times since then, and you begin to notice the overall structure. When the poem gets to the last part, 'What the Thunder said', there is this transition that is at once magnificent, sobering, yet somewhat hallucinatory and disturbing. This part always gets me:

"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?"

'The Wasteland' is perhaps the least 'telly' of Eliot's work. I've come to appreciate more and more 'The Four Quartets' over any other of his works, but 'The Wasteland' remains the one poem of his that is the most tight, the one that gets across its business to the reader superbly, showing and not telling, while at the same time being the work of art that was the departure from the 'antiquated' verse, a whole new aesthetic that was no mere aesthetic, but was totally viable and worked and was vivid.

While many of the other poems in this book are well worth reading, I'm not sure 'The Love Song of Prufrock' really belongs. I don't understand how that one always gets bundled into books containing 'The Wasteland' and Eliot's other poems, which are far superior to 'Prufrock'. To my mind 'Prufrock' has not held up over the years. It marks the experiment that Eliot was to take over the years to betterment. It had its glory in his day, but I can't help feeling the poem is really not all that good.