"For many successive generations now, 'The Waste Land,' 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,' and 'Four Quartets' have continued to excited readers and to inspire young poets. Teenagers still discover his work with a thrill of wonder and recognition. Eliot's unique power, his understanding of interrelated beauty and squalor, freshness and despair, survives academic fashions, survives all interpretations, survives even his own dicta and formulations. He is one of the great poets." —Robert Pinsky, former Poet Laureate and author of Singing School

"An exalted nightmare, one of the great poems of the 20th century." —Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem (and Fall in Love with Poetry) and A Poet's Glossary