Modern American Poetry

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The poems were not epicurean; still, they were innocent of public-

spiritedness: they sang of private disgust and diffidence, and of people

who seemed genuine because they were unattractive or weak. The

author was irritated by tea parties, and not afraid to say so, with the

result that his occasional “might-have-beens” rang out with the precision

of a gong.... Here was a protest, and a feeble one, and the more congenial

for being feeble. For what, in that world of gigantic horror, was tolerable

except the slighter gestures of dissent?

—E.M. Forster on reading T.S. Eliot in 1917

By 1940 T.S. Eliot had emerged as the representative English poet of
modernism. This was one of those transitions that feel natural after they have
happened—that can seem to settle a reputation once and for all with a finality
mysterious to readers who witnessed the struggle for fame. Of such a
moment it is always fair to ask how far the climax it affords is a trick of
retrospect, a shadow we mistake for a necessary part of the landscape. What
if Eliot’s assimilation had occurred much faster? What if it had occurred
more slowly, or on a more idiosyncratic basis? Eliot’s letters and occasional
criticism are sown with doubt and wonder at the definitive quality of his
triumph. The way a few of his poems joined with a few of his polemical
essays to secure a unique place for his poetic achievement is one of those

DAVID BROMWICH

T.S. Eliot and Hart Crane

FromSkeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry.© 2001 by David Bromwich.