John--is there a more recent article than this one from April 2004? Seems to me that the reason they were reporting the ethnic breakdown results of the DNA testing was not that they wanted to be culturally sensitive. It was that they were still looking for the perpetrator, and that was all the info they had:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...st-Indies.html

Ah, here we are:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...x-attacks.html

Wow. Took 17 years to catch him. Assuming that this is the right guy, of course.

Don't we all go back to Grandma Lucy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2909803.stm

Nope

My grammy looked meaner than that!
.

I've always thought Eliot's painting of ordinary people in The Waste Land was slightly snobbish - as if seen in great detail but from a great height.

Philip, I wonder if what seems 'slightly snobbish' today would have been thought so at the time of writing, when class and language differences were so much more marked? As a relatively recently arrived American in London Eliot would have observed these in particularly vivid detail, from a 'height' not merely middle-class but alien.

The height, in the case of the pub conversations which form the concluding section of 'A Game of Chess' was literal rather than figurative. Peter Ackroyd's biography of 1984 (p.95) records that when the Eliots were living in Crawford Mansions just south of Baker Street in 1916-20 "the windows . . . looked down upon a pub on the other side of the street which, at closing time, would have been raucous." Eliot confirmed in 1942 that this was the origin of HURRY UP PLEASE IT's TIME in The Waste Land.

Much has been said about Eliot; pro and con. I am not really knowledgeable enough to have a strong opinion but I would just like to say that no writer inspires me to write more than T.S. Eliot.

I don't know why, but after reading Prufrock or really any of his work, I can't wait to get at it, and I get many good ideas as well. I have no idea why...he just connects with me I guess.

I love the guy, whatever. He and Dylan Thomas and Ted Hughes captured my little heart at an early age.

My Xmas gift to myself is gonna be the facsimile edition of The Waste Land (with Pound's edits) recently overseen by his wife Valerie.

Not a bad deal at only a tenner (Pounds Sterlng)

P

I suppose I should chip back in with a return to the matter of how the knowledge of a poet's private life and opinions affects one's evaluation of his work. To clarify, I don't mean to say that it should: merely that, unfortunately, it does. The less I know about a poet's private life, the happier I am. I'd love to be able to detach the work entirely from the background. If only it were easy to do.

John mentions Louis Macneice, a poet whose work I love. Autumn Journal seems great to me because it captures the spirit of an age. Autumn Sequel seems a failure because it's full of private chitchat about his friends.

And the parts of the Divine Comedy that I can't bear are those in which Dante's political opinions come most strongly through, and where the poetry is most in the service of theological dogma. The parts I love most are the ones in which he seems free from tendentiousness.

That's interesting, Adam, and it certainly applies to many poets. I fully agree with you about MacNeice, for instance. However, there are certain poets whose personality and life-stories are so intimately tied up with their works that you can't really prise them apart. An obvious example is Byron. Much of the fascination of Don Juan arises from the notion (perhaps the illusion) the reader has that Byron is really talking directly to him or her about his life and concerns - in a much truer way than he is in such posing works as Childe Harold, for instance. And I can't help but be intrigued by the facts of Byron's life and how they tie in with his poetry. Maybe there's something gossipy and nosey in my interest, but there's room in literature for that as well, I'd say.

There's a good essay by Auden, entitled "In Defence of Gossip". He was another one who said that he didn't want a biography of himself but was forever reviewing biographies of writers.

Sometimes you learn from the private life that the guy is nicer than you thought. I have met poets that I HAD thought were assholes (as you Americans say) and found out that they weren't. And it makes a difference. Perhaps it ought not to, but it does. Going back rather a long way, does not the tale of Petronius's protracted suicide make us like his work even more, if that were possible? And Gavin Ewart's poem about the death of W.S. Gilbert makes one think better of the cantankerous old sod. And since I love his verse, that's nice.

Hi All,

Hmn, very interesting. I didn't know that this thread had gotten into politics and poetry. Some of this is rehashing our conversation in another thread:

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...?t=9219&page=2

However, just to be a bit of a Devil's advocate, I will say that unlike others in the thread who have bent over backwards to say that Eliot's antisemitism hasn't damaged their enjoyment of his poetry, I find that I find myself flinching in disgust quite often when reading his poetry, precisely because he made antisemitism a part of so many of his poems:
"Sweeney Among the Nightingales," "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," "Dirge," "A Cooking Egg," "Gerontion," and The Waste Land. It's even worse if you look at ms. facsimile The Waste Land and see how it read before Pound edited out some of the antisemitic elements.

It is true that Eliot is a poet whom I continue to learn from, many of whose poems I think are quite brilliant, and a poet whom I continue to teach with relish in my classes. However, I think it is a mistake to claim that his racism was a passing fancy present only in a book he later disavowed. He took it seriously enough to weave it into quite a few of his poems, and since he wrote so very few poems in his lifetime the racism pollutes a significant percentage of his ouvre.

I have sympathy for his sad self and mental breakdowns, and am attracted to the honesty of his lifelong spiritual search, but in truth I read Eliot more for the brilliance of his language, for his extraordinary technique, for the compression and emotional intensity of his images, than for what he's saying. Thus, I can reread him often, usually with pleasure, and most of the time I can spit and largely ignore the foul taste he leaves in the mouth in these moments when his bad angels take over.

How is this reaction not "PC" in the sense in which it is used in this thread? Well, 1) it is based upon a careful lifelong reading and rereading of his poems and essays, not on a knee-jerk reaction, 2) it really is a personal reaction, not one that I ask others to have. Eliot's antisemitism matters to me because I'm am partly Jewish, though not religiously so, and had relatives die in the death camps. There is a difference between unthinking prejudice and genocide, clearly, and the two should not be equated. However, I am also aware that the one lays the groundwork for the other, whether it be Hutus and Tutsis, Turks and Armenians, or Serbs and Muslims from Kosovo.

I'll keep reading and enjoying the guy, but in the slightly careful way you have when talking in a bar with a fellow who seems like he just might have a gun in his pocket.

All Best,

Tony

Never mind (I've always wanted to say that - ever since it became popular).

Yeah, Philip, you missed what Tony just said, which doesn't fit on your list and I wish I had said first.

I dunno, did you include my inspirational interlude, Philip?

**********

Small but perfectly formed Roy, like all the best things.

P

You are a tartan tongued devil.

:o--:o--:o--:o

summon sed dis:

I've always thought Eliot's painting of ordinary people in The Waste Land was slightly snobbish - as if seen in great detail but from a great height.

wite trash like me is aluz fair game, sez I. Lookit mike lee's bloddy movees. I luv em but wud lik to kik his bluddy arse fer maken fun of me an mine.

Sum

Yes, there is something of Orson Welles in The Third Man to the guy.

You are all very lucky that at this point I restrain myself from posting my redoubled sonnet on Auden and Eliot.

Sam

You have a very valid point - I ought to feel ashamed of myself for being a snob when I watch Abigail's Party. But I don't!. Class snobbery is bred in the English bone, unfortunately. What that means nowadays is that everyone looks down on everyone else. I mean, stone the crows guv'nor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY

I was reflecting, just, that this thread began in Margate and was roughly about Eliot and his poetry. What a tangled journey it has made.

I lke this:

Lines for an Old Man

The tiger in his tiger-pit
Is not more irritable than I.
The whipping tail is not more still
Than when I smell the enemy
Writhing in the essential blood
Or dangling from the friendly tree.
When I lay bare the tooth of wit
The hissing over the archèd tongue
Is more affectionate than hate,
More bitter than the love of youth,
And inaccessible by the young.
Reflected from my golden eye
The dullard knows that he is mad.
Tell me if I am not glad!

Dunno why, just do, innit?

Philip

Regarding poets and their personal history, I try to read the poetry first and then delve into the biography later. The biographical information many times adds to the reading of the poem, but I always seem able to hang on to my first memories. I don't remember any of Lorca's work that told me that he was gay, but when I learned he was it added something important to the reading. And how can anyone read Dickinson without wanting to know more about her?

Interesting sidelight on Eliot, and perhaps actors who read verse, in today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...w-neuroscience

Thanks, Jerome. Very interesting.

Well, I hope she recites the poetry better than most actors manage. They bloody ACT it instead of reading it. I except the great Richard Burton.