T.S. Eliot Reads

View books by T.S. Eliot.

Never fails - Rated
This may sound curmudgeonly, but listening to T.S. Eliot reading "Four Quartets" has almost never failed to put me to sleep, no matter how agitated I may be. Once his lugubrious voice hits "Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future", I start to calm down, and I'm usually asleep soon after the end of the first stanza of Burnt Norton. It's truly amazing. Don't get me wrong, I love Eliot's poetry and am capable of appreciating it. But if you are spending hundreds on sleeping aids, try this instead.

THE VOICE OF THE POET - Rated
What an absolute joy it was to hear T S Eliot's own voice reading his poems which affected a whole generation during the Second World War and after and which have inspired students and readers ever since.
Although he tends to keep his voice dispassionate because of his belief that one must project one's own interpretation on the poems, it is still wonderful to hear him saying 'Da, Datta, Dayadavam' at the end of What the Thunder Said, and know that he is experiencing the peace which he describes.
Of course,the movement of the poems in The Waste Land and those in Four Quartets do convey the extent of his own personal suffering and then finally the release and happiness towards the end of his life, but to us, it also provides a comfort when we need it as the same movement is often also ours.
I love his poetry and I loved listening to him reading it.