Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This edition of Collected Poems 1909-1962 includes his verse from Prufrock and Other Observations , Four Quartets , and includes such literary landmarks as The Waste Land and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats .

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prufrock--1917 (p. 1)
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (p. 3)
• Portrait of a Lady (p. 8)
• Preludes (p. 13)
• Rhapsody on a Windy Night (p. 16)
• Morning at the Window (p. 19)
• The Boston Evening Transcript (p. 20)
• Aunt Helen (p. 21)
• Cousin Nancy (p. 22)
• Mr. Apollinax (p. 23)
• Hysteria (p. 24)
• Conversation Galante (p. 25)
• La Figlia che Piange (p. 26)
• Poems--1920 (p. 27)
• Gerontion (p. 29)
• Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar (p. 32)
• Sweeney Erect (p. 34)
• A Cooking Egg (p. 36)
• Le Directeur (p. 38)
• Melange Adultere de Tout (p. 39)
• Lune de Miel (p. 40)
• The Hippopotamus (p. 41)
• Dans le Restaurant (p. 43)
• Whispers of Immortality (p. 45)
• Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service (p. 47)
• Sweeney Among the Nightingales (p. 49)
• The Waste Land--1922 (p. 51)
• I. The Burial of the Dead (p. 53)
• II. A Game of Chess (p. 56)
• III. The Fire Sermon (p. 60)
• IV. Death by Water (p. 65)
• V. What the Thunder Said (p. 66)
• Notes on 'The Waste Land' (p. 70)
• The Hollow Men--1925 (p. 77)
• Ash-Wednesday--1930 (p. 83)
• I. Because I do not hope to turn again (p. 85)
• II. Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree (p. 87)
• III. At the first turning of the second stair (p. 89)
• IV. Who walked between the violet and the violet (p. 90)
• V. If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent (p. 92)
• VI. Although I do not hope to turn again (p. 94)
• Ariel Poems (p. 97)
• Journey of the Magi--1927 (p. 99)
• A Song for Simeon--1928 (p. 101)
• Animula--1929 (p. 103)
• Marina--1930 (p. 105)
• The Cultivation of Christmas Trees--1954 (p. 107)
• Unfinished Poems (p. 109)
• Sweeney Agonistes (p. 111)
• Fragment of a Prologue (p. 111)
• Fragment of an Agon (p. 118)
• Coriolan (p. 125)
• I. Triumphal March--1931 (p. 125)
• II. Difficulties of a Statesman (p. 127)
• Minor Poems (p. 131)
• Eyes that last I saw in tears (p. 133)
• The wind sprang up at four o'clock (p. 134)
• Five-finger exercises (p. 135)
• I. Lines to a Persian Cat (p. 135)
• II. Lines to a Yorkshire Terrier (p. 135)
• III. Lines to a Duck in the Park (p. 136)
• IV. Lines to Ralph Hodgson Esqre (p. 136)
• V. Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg (p. 137)
• Landscapes (p. 138)
• I. New Hampshire (p. 138)
• II. Virginia (p. 139)
• III. Usk (p. 140)
• IV. Rannoch, by Glencoe (p. 141)
• V. Cape Ann (p. 142)
• Lines for an Old Man (p. 143)
• Choruses From 'the Rock'--1934 (p. 145)
• I. The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven (p. 147)
• II. Thus your fathers were made (p. 152)
• III. The Word of the Lord came unto me, saying (p. 155)
• IV. There are those who would build the Temple (p. 158)
• V. O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart (p. 159)
• VI. It is hard for those who have never known persecution (p. 160)
• VII. In the beginning God created the world (p. 162)
• VIII. O Father we welcome your words (p. 165)
• IX. Son of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears (p. 167)
• X. You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned (p. 169)
• Four Quartets (p. 173)
• Burnt Norton--1935 (p. 175)
• East Coker--1940 (p. 182)
• The Dry Salvages--1941 (p. 191)
• Little Gidding--1942 (p. 200)
• Occasional Verses (p. 211)
• Defense of the Islands (p. 213)
• A Note on War Poetry (p. 215)
• To the Indians Who Died in Africa (p. 217)
• To Walter de la Mare (p. 219)
• A Dedication to My Wife (p. 221)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

He published his influential early criticism, much of it written as occasional pieces for literary periodicals. He developed such doctrines as the "dissociation of sensibility" and the "objective correlative" and elaborated his views on wit and on the relation of tradition to the individual talent. Eliot by this time had left his early, derivative verse far behind and had begun to publish avant-garde poetry (including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), which exploited fresh rhythms, abrupt juxtapositions, contemporary subject matter, and witty allusion. This period of creativity also resulted in another collection of verse (including "Gerontian") and culminated in The Waste Land, a masterpiece published in 1922 and produced partly during a period of psychological breakdown while married to his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot.

In 1922, Eliot became a director of the Faber & Faber publishing house, and in 1927 he became a British citizen and joined the Church of England. Thereafter, his career underwent a change. With the publication of Ash Wednesday in 1930, his poetry became more overtly Christian. As editor of the influential literary magazine The Criterion, he turned his hand to social as well as literary criticism, with an increasingly conservative orientation. His religious poetry culminated in Four Quartets, published individually from 1936 onward and collectively in 1943. This work is often considered to be his greatest poetic achievement. Eliot also wrote poetry in a much lighter vein, such as Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), a collection that was used during the early 1980s as the basis for the musical, Cats.

In addition to his contributions in poetry and criticism, Eliot is the pivotal verse dramatist of this century. He followed the lead of William Butler Yeats in attempting to revive metrical language in the theater. But, unlike Yeats, Eliot wanted a dramatic verse that would be self-effacing, capable of expressing the most prosaic passages in a play, and an insistent, undetected presence capable of elevating itself at a moment's notice. His progression from the pageant The Rock (1934) and Murder in the Cathedral (1935), written for the Canterbury Festival, through The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1949), a West End hit, was thus a matter of neutralizing obvious poetic effects and bringing prose passages into the flow of verse.

Recent critics have seen Eliot as a divided figure, covertly attracted to the very elements (romanticism, personality, heresy) he overtly condemned. His early attacks on romantic poets, for example, often reveal him as a romantic against the grain. The same divisions carry over into his verse, where violence struggles against restraint, emotion against order, and imagination against ironic detachment. This Eliot is more human and more attractive to contemporary taste. During his lifetime, Eliot received many honors and awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948.

(Bowker Author Biography)