The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems [#books #reviews]

by T.S. Eliot

Rating: 6/10

There will be time, there will be time
[...]
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

(Page 5)

The poem that gives the collection its title is very beautiful, the style very particular, the images evoked by the words very suggestive. The other poems maintain the same style but didn't strike me as much.

Quotes

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized is spread out against the sky [...].

[incipit]

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

[...]

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

[...]

Rubbing its back upon the window panes [...].

(Pages 4-5)

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 dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

(Page 6)

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

(Page 7)

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

(Page 9)

"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall

My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,

I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world

To be wonderful and youthful, after all."

Portrait of a Lady

(Page 13)

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted [...].

Preludes

(Page 18)

"[...] The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,

Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

The last twist of the knife.

Rhapsody of a Windy Night

(Page 24)