Thomas Stearns Eliot
I was a poet, critic, and editor born on September 26, 1988 in St. Louis Missouri. My parents werevery caring people. They volunteered alot of their time towards helping with humanity clubs, and orginizations. My father, Henry Eliot was the president of the hydrolic-press brick company. My mother, Charlotte Stearns, was a teacher. I was the youngest of seven children, which was not easy in my position. I had two older brothers and 5 older sisters. My parents were very important to me. Here is a picture of my father:
Education
Many of the people in my family attended Harvard. As for me, I went to the Smith Academy in St. Louis during my high school years. After high school, I went in search of a college, and ended up at Harvard, continuing the tradition in my family. Here, I studied Latin, Greek, German, and French. I soon earned my masters degree at Harvard, and had many poems published in the Harvard Advocate. I was awarded many scholorships, including one with an invitation to Oxford, but I declined, and stayed at Harvard, studying philosophy.
I met many people through my many years at the academy. Alot of my friends were also poets. One of my lifetime friends was Conrad Aiken. I met him at Harvard. He is a fantastic poet as well. I studied alot of writings by F.H. Bradley.
As for my poetry, not alot was written by me in my early years as a poet. In my lifetime, I did not write many poems at all. Just 2 or 3 a year. This was not alot, compared to the output of other great poets of my time. Here is a list of some of the poems that I wrote:
In addition to the poems listed above, another famous poem that I wrote, titled, "The Waste Land" was very popular. A audio recording of me reading this poem can be found below, along with a slideshow.
As I'm sure you can see, by a few of the pictures in this slideshow, I edited by poems untill there was no paper left. Constantly, I made changes, and revisions. More times than not, I had more than 20 drafts of a particular poem before I was happy with it.
Excerpt from Poem (Figurative Language)
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
TWELVE o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Interpretation
Life is only as creative as you make it. That’s what I take from this. This man (possible Eliot) is seeing and hearing things as he walks down the street. The lamp posts and benches are talking, and commenting on real life things. This is where imagination takes over. T.S. Eliot is a brilliant man, in his writing at least.
There is some figurative language in this poem. Most of which, are similes. From what I’ve seen, Eliot likes writing with similes most of all. Some examples are: “Beats like a fatalistic drum”, “Twists like a crooked pin.” . Along with these, and many others, Eliot included many Metaphors in his writing, such as, “As if the world gave up”. The world cannot “Give Up”. Another example of figurative language that T.S. used is personification. Example: The street-lamp said, "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter”. Last I checked, street lamps can’t talk. “The moon has lost her memory”. Again, personification. The tone of this poem is a casual, carefree type voice. All at the same time, it’s kind of depressing, then he jumps right back to happiness.
T.S. Eliot died on January 4th 1965.
Works Cited
Garraty, John A, and Mark C Carnes. "T.S. Eliot's Life and Career."
Modern American Poetry. 1999.
American Council of Learned Societies. 22 Oct. 2007
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/life.htm>
Pictures
Eliot. Photograph. 1927. The Works of T.S. Eliot. 30 Oct. 2007
<http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/graphics/author_images/ts%20eliot.jpg>.
Video
T.S. Eliot Reading. 2007. 30 Oct. 2007
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ>.
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