What were the themes of T.S. Eliots poems?
Eliot’s early poetical works— Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Poems (1920), and The Waste Land (1922)—express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual, particularly as reflected in the failure of love. The Waste Land, whose published version reflects extraordinary editing by Eliot’s friend Ezra Pound , compelled immediate critical attention. His complex early poems, employing myths, religious symbolism, and literary allusion, signified a break with 19th-century poetic traditions. Their models were the metaphysical poets , Dante , the Jacobean dramatists, and French symbolists . Their meter ranged from the lyrical to the conversational.
