My favourites were ‘The Preludes’, two choruses from ‘The Rock’, ‘Journey of the Magi’. The conversion from the existentialism of ‘The Wasteland’ and ‘Prufrock’ to Eliot’s latter evangelical poems was intriguing, especially in terms of studying the development of his style. It was the perfect book to read following Golding’s ‘The Spire’. 

The nearness Eliot describes to his creator in birthing his daughter in ‘Marina’, is beautiful in its innocence and humility; the reflections upon life and death alongside being a believer in an atheist or misled world in ‘Journey of the Magi’ are incredibly profound and poignant; ‘The Preludes’ speak to so much of the futility one feels in the seemingly insignificant repetition of everyday life. There was this one section within ‘Prufrock’ of life being measured by coffee spoons that struck me, the feeling that continuing to eat or drink is pointless is one that regularly occurs to me on my period, so this resonated personally.

Eliot’s masterpiece, ‘The Wasteland’ was gorgeously modernist, and I have been so intrigued as to what modernist poetry would look like compared to the modernist poetry I so adore. It is certainly a style I like, and I would love to learn to be able to adopt it for my own purposes.