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T.S. Eliot considered George Herbert one of the liveliest and most profound of English poets with whose work he felt an instinctive accord. Describing The Temple as … ‘not simply a collection of poems but … a record of the spiritual struggles of a man of intellectual power and emotional intensity who gave much toil to perfecting his verses …'T.S. Eliot considered Herbert's religious verse above John Donne's and placed him firmly in the ranks of the great English poets. Peter Porter's new introduction gives a fresh perspective on the poetry of Herbert and on Eliot's study itself.

“Eliot's unique power, his understanding of interrelated beauty and squalor, freshness and despair, survives academic fashions, survives all interpretations, survives even his own dicta and formulations. He is one of the great poets.” —Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate and author of Singing School“An exalted nightmare, one of the great poems of the 20th century.” —Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry) and A Poet's Glossary

Certain of these poems first appeared in Poetry, Blast, Others, The Little Review, and Art and Letters. Contents: Gerontion; Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar; Sweeney Erect; A Cooking Egg; Le Directeur; Melange adultere de tout; Lune de Miel; The Hippopotamus; Dans le Restaurant; Whispers of Immortality; Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service; Sweeney Among the Nightingales; The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; Portrait of a Lady; Preludes; Rhapsody on a Windy Night; Morning at the Window; The Boston Evening Transcript; Aunt Helen; Cousin Nancy; Mr. Apollinax; Hysteria; Conversation Galante; La Figlia Che Pianga.

This critique of modern society argues that culture must be organic, and cannot be planned or imposed. The word culture has been widely and erroneously employed in political, educational, and journalistic contexts. In helping to define a word so greatly misused, T. S. Eliot contradicts many of our popular assumptions about culture, reminding us that it is not the possession of any one class but of a whole society—and yet its preservation may depend on the continuance of a class system, and that a “classless” society may be a society in which culture has ceased to exist. Surveying the post–World War II world, Eliot finds evidence of decay in cultural standards in every department of human activity, and expects the phenomenon to continue. He suggests that culture and religion have a common root—and if one decays, the other may die too. In observing the superpowers of his day and the course of recent history, he reminds us that “the Russians have been the first modern people to practise the political direction of culture consciously, and to attack at every point the culture of any people whom they wish to dominate.” The appendix includes Eliot's broadcasts to Europe, ending with a plea to preserve the legacy of Greece, Rome, and Israel, and Europe's legacy throughout the last two thousand years. “Behind the urbanity, the modesty, the mere good manners of Mr. Eliot's exposition, one cannot mistake the force and significance of what he has to say, or ignore that it constitutes a fundamental attack on most of our assumptions on the subject.” —The Spectator

There is no more authoritative collection of the poetry that Eliot himself wished to preserve than this volume, published two years before his death in 1965.Poet, dramatist, critic, and editor, T. S. Eliot was one of the defining figures of twentieth-century poetry. This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock along with Four Quartets, The Waste Land, and several other poems.

The last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, considered by Eliot himself to be his finest workFour Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in “The Waste Land.” Here, in four linked poems (“Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding”), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.

Chosen by Eliot himself, the poems in this volume represent the poet's most important work before Four Quartets. Included here is some of the most celebrated verse in modern literature—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Gerontion,” “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” and “Ash Wednesday”—as well as many other fine selections from Eliot's early work.

“For many successive generations now, ‘The Waste Land,'‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,'and ‘Four Quartets'have continued to excited readers and to inspire young poets. Teenagers still discover his work with a thrill of wonder and recognition. Eliot's unique power, his understanding of interrelated beauty and squalor, freshness and despair, survives academic fashions, survives all interpretations, survives even his own dicta and formulations. He is one of the great poets.” —Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate and author of Singing School“An exalted nightmare, one of the great poems of the 20th century.” —Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry) and A Poet's Glossary

A comedic play about the universal quest for meaning, written in some of Eliot's “most beautiful poetry” (The New York Times). A sterling example of contemporary theater, The Cocktail Party is a dramatic tour de force from one of our greatest writers to date.