Author Biography
When T. S. Eliot died, wrote Robert Giroux, the world became a lesser place. Certainly the most imposing poet of his time, Eliot was revered by Igor Stravinsky not only as a great sorcerer of words but as the very key keeper of the language. For Alfred Kazin he was themana known as 'T. S. Eliot, ' the model poet of our time, the most cited poet and incarnation of literary correctness in the English-speaking world. Northrop Frye simply states: A thorough knowledge of Eliot is compulsory for anyone interested in contemporary literature. Whether he is liked or disliked is of no importance, but he must be read. In 1945 Eliot wrote: A poet must take as his material his own language as it is actually spoken around him. Correlatively, the duty of the poet, as Eliot emphasized in a 1943 lecture, is only indirectly to the people: his direct duty is to his language, first to preserve, and second to extend and improve. (TPF)
