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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody, this is Mort Marcus, and tonight the program we will do deals with the work of a giant, maybe the greatest giant of the 20th century as far as poetry is concerned. And we'll get to that giant immediately

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after I thank Stapleton's Grocery for providing a grant to help this portion of the program. Stapleton's organic produce, bulk foods, and more in the Farmers Exchange in Santa Cruz.

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T.S. Eliot: And tonight, we do have the birthday of a giant, the one hundredth birthday of a giant yesterday, September 26th, 1988, marked the 100th birthday, that is September 26th, 1888, a hundred years ago, of T.S. Eliot, probably the most

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influential poet in the English language, a man whose poems really defined what modern poetry would all be about, and who influenced poets, not only in English but in virtually every other Western language and Eastern language. A man who

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really set the tone of what the 20th century would sound like and look like in literature, and it is with his poetry that we will be dealing tonight. Morton Marcus: Well, hello, everybody. Tonight, as I said,

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we are going to deal with the work of T.S. Eliot. And the problem of doing such a show as this is to try to keep one's comments down because Eliot is certainly a poet who has warranted enormous exigencies(?). I'll just tell

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you very simply, the following things about him: it was in Eliot's work that we first saw the modern world of cities and soot and chimney pots and alleys, which were unclean and full of garbage. It was Eliot who turned the imagery of poetry

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modern urban life, to the waste of modern urban life, not only in the bureaucracies but in the very streets themselves, and first gave us a hint of what the 20th century attitude would be. We're going to see that early on in the poems that are going to

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be read within the next five minutes. Secondly, besides confronting the 20th century in terms of its own imagery, which was considered non-poetic images before Eliot began to write, he began to use imagery in a very interesting way, a way which has

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become known as the very epitome of modern literary usage. And that is, he used images to give you a sense of abstractions. He would tell you, therefore, that I feel like "a patient etherized upon a table," and that image was to emotionally correspond to

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the intellectual idea in your mind of someone who is unable to move, someone who is paralyzed with indecision. There are many, many pictures in Eliot which recall ideas, and this is another way of talking about the objective correlative. We'll

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listen to one poem here called, "Preludes," in which he says, "We get up in the morning and we look at the yellow soles of our feet," and there's just sort of this hopelessness of sitting on the side of the bed, the picture, and having nothing to

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do, no sense of inspiration, except sitting and looking at one's feet. And another one, he says, "We count out our life with coffee spoons," an image of great boredom, great tedium, and again, lack of inspiration. These are all objective

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correlatives. The images give us an emotional sense of what the author wants to say intellectually. The other thing is, he advances his poems by association and not by logical sequencing, so that he associates one image with

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another. In, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which I'll be playing in a moment, notice that the arms that appear in one section of workmen smoking pipes at windows, in another section remind him of a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the

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floors of silent seas. It's the imagery that relates here, he's making imaginative leaps, moving by association. The last thing about Eliot's poetry that may give you any problems is something that I'm not going to hardly mention at all and that

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is his allusion. In other words, he is making reference to many literary works, historical events that occur outside the poem and are usually the basis of other literatures. And I'm going to try to keep down that sense of explaining things to

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you as I go along. We're going to listen to his first and maybe most- first mature and possibly most famous poem, and that is, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and we're actually going to hear T.S. Eliot reading the poem. Now, what I want to

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tell you about, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is: it is a dramatic monologue. We are listening to Prufrock talk, he is talking to you and I, but I think what he's really doing, the 'you' in this case, is Prufrock talking to himself,

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talking to an unconscious part of himself, the part of himself that he believes will enable him to take action. Because the great problem that Eliot faces in 20th century man is not that man is good or evil, but that man is indecisive, and being

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unable to make an action in the 20th century is what is evil. If you can finally bring yourself to act, if you can commit yourself to action, if you can "commit," then you will be able to go through the barricades or the barriers of the 20th

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century. That is the disease from which we suffer: the inability to act because we have nothing to believe in. We've had the chance to believe and it has gone from us. His allusions remind us of great times in the past, usually given to us by

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great pieces of literature or historical events. And by referring to those allusions and showing man the way he is in the 20th century, he shows how far we have fallen. Well, in, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," he tells us we're

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going to make a trip to the seamier side of town. But in making the trip to the seamier side of town, he is going to finally take the world- the reins in his hands, if you will, and perform an action, an action that will be as we see, since

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this is a love poem, an action to make love to a woman, an action to just move where people live and work. But if you notice, as the poem goes on, less and less is he sure of himself about taking the action he talks about in the first two

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stanzas when he says, "Let us go then, you and I," and more and more he breaks down into a rich man's very, very cloistered interior -- notice all this takes place in a household, in a domestic life -- and his fears of getting older, and his fears

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of being made fun of by other people, and his fears of taking any action at all. And what we're left with is a man who really is almost humorously hopeless, and yet pathetic, because he cannot act on any idea or desire that he has. This

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is, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," notice how he compares himself. He says, he is not a prophet, he won't commit himself like John the Baptist, he will not lose his head. He is not like Hamlet, who also was indecisive, but finally takes

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the action. He is more like Polonius, the windy advisor, who is more a fool and a clown than a man who's going to take any heroic action at all. The problem here is a moral problem and that is: the inability to act, the inability to commit

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shows that there is no meaning in the world, and what each one of Eliot's early heroes, early voices from plays -- which is what dramatic monologues really are -- is, let's say, almost destroyed by because what this means is they have nothing to

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believe in, God is no longer in the world. And it is that journey, that Odyssey that Eliot is going on, the search for meaning, the search for God. Anyway, here is, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the epitome of the Eliot antihero,

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the man who cannot act. It is read here by the poet himself and if this sounds very scratchy, it's a very, very old record. T.S. Eliot on his birthday, the day after it, one hundred years young reads:

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THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK T.S. Eliot: Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table; let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

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the muttering retreats of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent to lead you to an overwhelming question. Oh, do

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not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, licked its tongue

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into the corners of the evening, lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, and seeing that it was a soft October night, curled once about

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the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time for the yellow smoke that slides along the street, rubbing its back upon the window-panes; there will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

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there will be time to murder and create, and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate; time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions, before

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the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time to wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair --

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they will say: “How his hair is growing thin!” My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, my necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -- they will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!” Do I dare disturb the universe? In

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a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices

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dying with a dying fall beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all --the eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, and when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, when I am

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pinned and wriggling on the wall, then how should I begin to spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all -- arms that are braceleted and white and bare, but in the

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lamplight, downed with light brown hair! Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

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and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

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Smoothed by long fingers, asleep, tired, or it malingers, stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and

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prayed, though I have seen my head grown slightly bald brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet -- and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, and

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in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, after the cups, the marmalade, the tea, among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, would it have been worth while, to have bitten off the matter with a smile, to have

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squeezed the universe into a ball to roll it towards some overwhelming question, to say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” -- if one, settling a pillow by her head should say: “That is not what I

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meant at all; that is not it, at all.” And would it have been worth it, after all, would it have been worth while, after the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, after the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the

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floor -- and this, and so much more? It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: would it have been worth while if one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, and turning toward

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the window, should say: “That is not it at all, that is not what I meant, at all.” No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince; no

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doubt, an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, politic, cautious, and meticulous; full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; at times, indeed, almost ridiculous -- almost, at times, the fool. I grow old, I grow old, I shall

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wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will

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sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves combing the white hair of the waves blown back when the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown till

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human voices wake us, and we drown. That was T.S. Eliot reading, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and obviously the person he asks to go with him, "let us go now, you and I," is the companion of sort of his

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alter ego, he goes into a dream with and the dream is the dream of action. The dream is the dream of this ability to confess his inability to act. And finally in the end, as he makes the foolish notion that maybe he'll part his hair behind or

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even roll his trousers and he will dare to eat a peach when he's an old man realizing he just cannot act, he wakes and he wakes to drowning because he wakes to the world he really cannot act in. That is actually the lead poem in Eliot's first

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book, and is the most popular poem that he ever wrote as far as readership and reprint is concerned. The book is called, "Prufrock," and is dated 1917. The second poem is called, "Portrait of a Lady." And the character who now talks is sort

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of an adolescent Prufrock, a male who talks about an affair he's had with this older woman, and his inability to commit himself to feeling for the woman. She seems to have come after him and seduced him and he was attracted. What we do in

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three parts is we trace this entire affair through one year. And notice it goes from December, the first line mentioned, to spring when lilacs are blooming, and then back to the autumn of October. Now, the seasons are of course a very

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important symbol in all poetry. They represent fall, which is the season of dying, the inability to act and death, of course, is winter, spring is rejuvenation. And it is interesting that this poem moves from autumn, the season of dying

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to rejuvenation in the lilac section. And then in part three, we're back in October, where it is once more a season of dying. The inability of the young adolescent lover here to make a commitment, and it is very interesting that the epigraph

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that Eliot writes to this poem, "Portrait of a Lady," is from, "The Jew of Malta," by Webster and it reads, "Thou has committed fornication, but that was in another country and besides the wench is dead," and in a way that relates to this.

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But it is interesting that the line is broken, "Thou has committed," you see? You haven't committed yourself but you just merely committed fornication, you haven't committed an emotional or a moral commitment to life. In the first section,

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there is a line which goes, "We have been let us say to hear the latest pole transmit the preludes." What this means is we have been to a concert to hear the latest Polish pianist transmit the preludes, that is as a piano player, and recalling

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the great Chopin as both performer and composer of piano music. And it seems that's where the attraction and the- not the seduction, but the first instances of shall I say the beginning of the affair takes place at this musical concert.

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Here once again is T.S. Eliot in this early poem, dated 1915, reading: Morton Marcus: PORTRAIT OF A LADY T.S. Eliot: Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon you

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have the scene arrange itself --- as it will seem to do -- with "I have saved this afternoon for you"; and four wax candles in the darkened room, four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead, an atmosphere of Juliet's tomb prepared for

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all the things to be said, or left unsaid. We have been, let us say, to hear the latest pole transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips." So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul should be resurrected only among friends

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some two or three, who will not touch the bloom that is rubbed and questioned in the concert room." And so the conversation slips among velleities and carefully caught regrets through attenuated tones of violins mingled with remote cornets and

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begins. "You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, and how, how rare and strange it is, to find in a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, for indeed I do not love it, you

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knew? You are not blind! How keen you are! To find a friend who has these qualities, who has, and gives those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you -- without these friendships -- life, what cauchemar!" Among

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the winding of the violins and the ariettes of cracked cornets inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, capricious monotone that is at least one definite "false note." Let us take the air, in a tobacco

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trance, admire the monuments, discuss the late events, correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks. Morton Marcus: And that was T.S. Eliot reading his poem,

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"Portrait of a Lady." We are celebrating the 100th birthday of T.S. Eliot, probably the greatest giant in English poetry of the 20th century, the man who really gave direction to the modernist movement, and who really influenced all poetry

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that would be written after him, even if people deny that and move against him, even that, is his own kind of influence. And we'll be back with announcements in a moment. T.S. Eliot: Again this is the time in the Poetry Show when we

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read a number of announcements and the first one is for Wednesday, October 5th, that is the Wednesday after tomorrow, the Zachary's readings. The National Writers Union readings at Zachary's sponsored by Local Seven presents Carol Staudacher,

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Phil Doherty, and Kiva, as well as readings of work in progress and an open mic session, 7:30pm down on the mall at Zachary's Restaurant, 819 Pacific Avenue. The first Wednesday of every month is poetry night at Zachary's, come 7:30. This

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Friday, however, on September 30th, at 8pm in the Bookshop Santa Cruz, there will be a book signing. William Everson and Lee Bartlett, "The Life of Brother Antoninus," is what the name of the book is and certainly I would urge you to go. Brother

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Antoninus, William Everson, who we have interviewed on the show and had on the show numerous times is, of course, the finest poet in the area and is a living legend in American literature. So that is 8pm at the Bookshop Santa Cruz this Friday,

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September 30th. I do again urge you to attend William Everson's, "The Life of Brother Antoninus," I gather by Lee Bartlett. But also on Friday, if you feel like going to San Jose, are in San Jose, Paul Zimmer, and award winning poet with a gift for

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stand up comedy performs Friday, September 30th at San Jose State University. The program starts at 8pm in the auditorium of the university's new engineering building, admission is charged. For further information, call San Jose Center for Poetry and

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Literature at 924-4598, that is at 924-4598 and that will be at San Jose State this Friday in the new engineering building, that is in the auditorium of the engineering building. Are those my announcements for the day? They certainly are.

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Morton Marcus: We are celebrating the 100th anniversary- of the 100t anniversary of T.S. Eliot today And I would like to play for yo again an early poem and the jump on to a section of "The Wasteland." This was really one

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of the first poems that I read and it's imagery is so startling and wonderful that I thought I would share it for you. It's a very early poem, it's dated 1915 and it is called, "Preludes," and all it is are preludes, four of them, which also take place

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in different parts of the year and move from winter all the wa around to autumn. And it is th idea here of the year agai symbolically given to us a death, not only death of t e body but death of the spirit and then rebirth, and finall

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coming back to the year dying Again, it is written at a tim when Eliot, searching for faith believed nothing. But it is wonderful look at how he fixe unpoetic material and makes i poetic, in this case, the urba scene, early life in the earl

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years of the 20th century i cities, and this is I. And notice again, each one of these four preludes takes place PRELUDES in a different season.

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The winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet and newspapers from vacant lots; the showers

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beat on broken blinds and chimney-pots, and at the corner of the street a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. II.

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The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdust-trampled street with all its muddy feet that press to early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades that time resumes, one thinks of all the

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hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms. III. You tossed a blanket from the bed, you lay upon your back, and

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waited; you dozed, and watched the night revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted; they flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back and the light crept up between the shutters and you heard the

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sparrows in the gutters, you had such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands. Sitting along the bed’s edge, where you curled the papers from your hair, or clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands.

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IV. His soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind a city block, or trampled by insistent feet at four and five and six o’clock; and short square fingers stuffing pipes,

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and evening newspapers, and eyes assured of certain certainties, the conscience of a blackened world impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images, and cling: the notion of some infinitely gentle,

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infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; the worlds revolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots. In all those portraits -- the first and the last one having to

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do with evening, and the second and the third one having to do with getting up in the morning, this endless rut, this endless continuous life of the cities -- finally the poet comes out and he says, "I am moved by fancies that are curled around these

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images and cling the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.' And that is the man, the human being caught in the situation, the adolescent lover and portrait of a woman or even Prufrock himself. But suddenly he changes

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his attitude and he says, the only thing you can do in this situation is be scornful, "wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh." Alright. And then he has a picture of the world and it's a magnificent image. Again, one of these objective correlatives

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in which he sees the worlds revolving, all the planets, all the galaxies revolving like ancient women, and they're just gathering fuel in vacant lots so that in all the world there's no meaning up there. They're just like old women trying to get a

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little warmth for themselves. And that's what the world is all about, there is nothing else, there is no infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing which is not only man, but also seems to be a description of Christ, the Christ that Eliot is looking

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for. Well, now let us go to maybe his most famous poem and that is the famous, "Wasteland," which is in, again, a number of sections. I'm going to only go into the section which is called- and I

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have forgotten what it is called, so I'm just looking it up here in my little book. It is called, "A Game of Chess." And it depicts women, again women in two different situations, it is divided in half: the first half deals with the rich, the second

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half deals with the poor. And you see this woman sitting in this exquisitely expensive boudoir, doing her face in the mirror and the description is actually a parody of the description. This is an allusion, it is a parody of the

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description given by [unidentified] describing Cleopatra's barge, and his sight of her coming down the river in Act Two, Scene Two of Shakespeare's, "Anthony and Cleopatra." The woman though is obviously half insane, is

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terrified of the noises outside the door, and cannot relate to her lover at all. After this section, we then go to a pub and we hear two lower class women talking, and we see that their life is also messed up, though different from the half insane

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rich women in the different class, still, they themselves have a very unsure love life and find a world that lacks meaning around them. So here, from the viewpoint of women, tracing the life of women, from, "The Wasteland:"

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A GAME OF CHESS, is once again T.S. Eliot reading this section of his famous poem and one of the most famous long poems in the English language. T.S. Eliot: The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

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glowed on the marble, where the glass held up by standards wrought with fruited vines from which a golden Cupidon peeped out- Morton Marcus: Well, there seems to be something wrong with the

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recording machine I was using. I will replace the record on another machine, and we will listen to it now. Once again, T.S. Eliot reading the second section of, "The Wasteland:" A GAME OF CHESS

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T.S. Eliot: The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble, where the glass held up by standards wrought with fruited vines from which a golden Cupidon peeped out, another hid his eyes behind his wing, doubled the flames of

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sevenbranched candelabra reflecting light upon the table as the glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, from satin cases poured in rich profusion; in vials of ivory and coloured glass. Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

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unguent, powdered, or liquid --troubled, confused and drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air that freshened from the window, these ascended in fattening the prolonged candle-flames, flung their smoke into the laquearia, stirring the

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pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, in which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantel was displayed as though a window gave upon the sylvan scene. The

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change of Philomel, by the barbarous king so rudely forced; yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice and still she cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug,” stumps of time were told upon the walls; staring forms

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leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair spread out in fiery points glowed into words, then would be savagely still. “My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with

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me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.” I think we are in rats’ alley where the dead men lost their bones. “What is that noise?” The wind under the

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door. “What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?” Nothing again nothing. “Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?” I remember those are pearls that were his eyes. “Are you alive, or not? Is there

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nothing in your head?” But oh, oh, oh, oh that Shakespeherian Rag -- it’s so elegant so intelligent “What shall I do now? What shall I do?” “I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street with my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? What

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shall we ever do?” The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

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When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said -- I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself, "Hurry up please, it's time!" Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you to get

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yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, he said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you. And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert, he’s been in the army four years, he wants a good

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time, And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said. Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. "Hurry up please, it's time!" If you don’t like it you

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can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can’t. But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique, and her only thirty-one. I can’t help it, she

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said, pulling a long face, it’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George. The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if

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Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said, what you get married for if you don’t want children? "Hurry up please, it's time!" Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, and they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it

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hot -- "Hurry up please, it's time! Hurry up please, it's time!" Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta-ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

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Morton Marcus: That was T.S. Eliot reading, "A Game of Chess," from, "The Wasteland." And if you've just tuned in, driving home from somewhere, we are celebrating T.S. Eliot's 100th birthday. He was born September 26th 1888. Well,

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after, "The Wasteland," and its extremely negative depiction of existence, Eliot wrote, "The Hollow Men," and also wrote, "Ash Wednesday." And it is in, "Ash Wednesday," that he really begins to talk about salvation and how one can really become

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saved. And I thought that I would just read a part of that. What he does is he goes back to the Anglican Church and finds in that a definite sense of salvation in a very, very strong and almost Orthodox Christian church. And this is the final

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section, maybe the final two sections of this poem: ASH WEDNESDAY, which is really beautiful and very, very chant-like and very much like a chorus chanting. So here are the last two sections:

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[V.] If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent, if the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard, the Word without a word, the Word within the world and for the world. [...]

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Not here, there is not enough silence. Not on the sea or on the islands, not on the mainland, in the desert or the rain land, for those who walk in darkness both in the day time and in the night time, the right time and the right place are not

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here. No place of grace for those who avoid the face. No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice. Will the veiled sister pray for those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, those who are torn on the horn

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between season and season, time and time, between hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait in darkness? Will the veiled sister pray for children at the gate who will not go away and cannot pray: pray for those who chose and

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oppose. Oh, my people, what have I done unto thee. Will the veiled sister between the slender yew trees pray for those who offend her and are terrified and cannot surrender

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and affirm before the world and deny between the rocks in the last desert before the last blue rocks, the desert in the garden, the garden in the desert of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

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Oh, my people. And I think you can hear in that the beautiful use of rhythm and the use of rhymes that are not only at the end of lines, but interior to lines. In other words, internal rhymes, and how

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this sets up a rhythm and a wordplay, which becomes almost chant-like. Let's go on now to the end of this. Now, also notice that this is much more abstract than the poetry we've been reading so far. And maybe this is one of the faults of

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Eliot, though he of course would also write- well, he'd write the, "Ariel Poems," which have some more of these dramatic monologues in them. But he would also write four quartets, which I'm going to read from in a few moments, but here is anyway the

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end of: ASH WEDNESDAY [VI.] Although I do not hope to turn again, although I do not hope, although I do not hope to turn

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Wavering between the profit and the loss, in this brief transit where the dreams cross, the dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying (Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things from the wide window towards the granite

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shore, the white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying unbroken wings. And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices, and the weak spirit quickens to rebel

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for the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover. The cry of quail and the whirling plover and the blind eye creates the empty forms between the ivory gates and smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth.

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This is the time of tension between dying and birth, the place of solitude where three dreams cross between blue rocks. But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away, let the other yew be shaken and reply.

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Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood. Teach us to care and not to care, teach us to sit still even among these rocks. Our peace is His will and even among these

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rocks, sister, mother, and spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, suffer me not to be separated. And let my cry come unto Thee. Very prayer-like, certainly the tone is extremely- I don't even

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know the right word. It's not religious, but extremely contrite, extremely desiring in a spiritual realm for some sense of spiritual contact, not expecting much. His last great poem -- and as I said he did write plays like, "The Cocktail

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Party," "Murder in the Cathedral" -- his last great poems were the very interesting four quartets, four poems separate and yet intertwined that talk in ways like this, that begins like this: "Time present and time past or both

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perhaps present in time future and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. What might have been as an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility only in a world of speculation." As you

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can see it's very very abstract but there are also moments of incredible, incredible beauty. And let me read some of that to you now. And I am looking towards, "The Dry Salvages," here, if I can find where I had my thing- yes. Just some section

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like this from: THE DRY SALVAGES, which are group of rocks off the Massachusetts coast. The sea howl and the sea yelp, are different voices often

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together heard: the whine in the rigging, the menace and caress of wave that breaks on water, the distant note in the granite teeth, and the wailing warning from the approaching headland are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner rounded

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homewards, and the seagull: and under the oppression of the silent fog the tolling bell measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried ground swell, a time older than the time of chronometers, older than time counted by anxious worried women

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lying awake, calculating the future, trying to unweave, unwind, unravel and piece together the past and the future, between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception, the future futureless, before the morning

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watch when time stops and time is never ending; and the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning, clangs the bell. And finally, I would like to end with the very last lines of, "The Four Quartets," the last important poem that Eliot wrote,

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as I said, in which his vision is now definitely a vision of purpose and definitely a vision of meaning, again, all based on his belief in the rock of the Anglican Church. And this is how he ends this poem with a vision of some future:

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We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is

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that which was the beginning; at the source of the longest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall, and the children in the apple-tree not known, because not looked for but heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of

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the sea. Quick now, here, now, always -- a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well when the tongues of flames are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire

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and the fire and the rose are one. We have been reading the poetry of T.S. Eliot, the great, maybe the greatest English poet, certainly the most influential. The man who I said really gave direction to modern poetry all

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over the Western world, and in many times, even in the Eastern world, as Japan and China look towards the West for new models to talk about this new century. He is a hundred years young as of yesterday, he was born September 26th, 1888. As we

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leave tonight, I would like to say two things: one, thanks to Plaza Books, which has provided a grant that helped make the last half-hour programming possible. Plaza Books is located on the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, we appreciate their

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support. I would also like to say, stay tuned for Tim Folger and "Things Ain't What They Used To Be," and to tell you that next week, next week, friends, is Octopush. And we will be here asking for donations on behalf of the Poetry Show to KUSP,

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which as most of you out there know, is a totally listener supported radio station. It takes a lot of money just to run the station, all the people here -- Joe, myself in the poetry hour, Tim on "Things Ain't Wha They Used To Be" -- are a

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l volunteers. And the only w y this station can keep going s with your donation. So ne t week, you have a chance to sh w how much you're enjoying t e Poetry Show which Joe and I re bringing you. If you want to give or donate money to ot

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er KUSP shows, certainly do call up at the times the shows are on and make your donation beca se next week, as I said, is Octo ush and we will be here asking you for your opinions really in good hard cash, of what you hink of what Joe and I are doing

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here on the Poetry Show. So, appy birthday, T.S. Eliot. We look forward to talking wit you people out there next week And right now, we leave telling you, stay tuned for Tim Folge and "Things Ain't What They U ed To Be." This is Mort Marcus

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saying good