[Rob Stuart]

John, I thought your T.S. Eliot superb, incidentally. I'd be very surprised if you weren't a winner with that (but what do I know?) I can't for the life of me figure out the saurian reference, though.

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Rob. I knew what I meant when I wrote it but I've forgotten. I'll get back to you on it.

[Eileen Cleary]

Emily Dickinson’s Rules for Writing:

1.−Tell it slant−
2. Capitalize−common Nouns−
3. Make the Lexicon− your only Companion−
4. –Dabble in linguistic surprise−
5.−Make the Abstract tangible−
6 .−Dwell in Possibility−

[John Whitworth]

Rob. I think 'saurian' is really about the way Eliot always seems so OLD, not to his actual appearance. Old and cold, don't you know. Does tht make sense?

[Rob Stuart]

Not sure, John. Seems a tad obscure to me.

[Chris O'Carroll]

C’mon, now -- if Eliot doesn’t seem lizard-y, are Radcliffe and Smith and McKellen not wizard-y?

[John Whitworth]

O Rob, all this OLD stuff... an old man in a dry month... why should the aged eagle stretch his wings...I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.. and dry stuff too... and desert stuff ... dust, dust, dust of dust..

Lizardy. Definitely. Tennyson is wizardy.

[Rob Stuart]

Fair enough.

[basil ransome-davies]

Eliot's world-weary whinge, 'Why should the aged eagle spread his wings?' got short shrift from Edmund Wilson, who pointed out that the poet was barely in his 40s at the time.

[Jerome Betts]

John, perhaps you were thinking of William Plomer's 'The Playboy of the Demi World: 1938'?

D'Arcy Honeybunn has 'The eyes of some old saurian in decay'