T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OMwas an American-born British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He moved to England in 1914 at age 25, settling, working and marrying there. He was eventually naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39, renouncing his American citizenship...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 September 1888
CountryUnited States of America
art poetry feelings
I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.
games poetry mug
Poetry is a mug's game.
voice poetry humans
Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.
poetry tests genuine
It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
thinking america poetry
I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.
art writing reading-poetry
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
poetry crafts conscious
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
poetry literature language
Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors.
personality poetry individual-talent
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion,
mean poetry may
What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.
art poetry return
All art emulates the condition of ritual. That is what it comes from and to that it must always return for nourishment.
loneliness thinking poetry
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
communication writing poetry
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
death poetry religion
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.