“The vers libre of Jules Laforgue, who, if not quite the greatest French poet after Baudelaire, was certainly the most important technical innovator, is free verse in much the way that the later verse of Shakespeare, Webster, Tourneur, is free verse · · · My own verse is, so far as I can judge, nearer to the original meaning of vers libre than is any of the other types: at least, the form in which I began to write, in 1908 or 1909, was directly drawn from the study of Laforgue together with the later Elizabethan drama; and I do not know anyone who started from exactly that point”, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (1928), Introduction.
People often wonder why poets do not remain content with the vocabulary and the verse forms inherited from older poets who have done well with them, and why poets insist on devising new forms which seem at first uglier or more disorderly. No good poet wants novelty or eccentricity for its own sake: the element of surprise in goodpoetry is something which remains forever, and is not only valid for its own time. But something is constantly happening to any living language; the changes in the world about us and in the lives we live are reflected in our speech; so that a verse form which once was natural, which once was a development of the way men talked in ordinary intercourse, can become artificial. I think that this superannuation has happened to blank verse; that the way in which we talk nowadays does not fit naturally into that frame. I find that blank verse is what I tend to write when I have been working too long, when I am tired or inattentive, and that when I am at my best I avoid any line which must be scanned as regular blank verse, and admit only a line here or there which can be scanned in that way.
A New Tradition of Poetic Drama (1940)
“There are two kinds of free verse (or rather two things which pass under that name): one, verse in which regular and established metres are broken up almost—not quite—out of recognition. The pleasure one gets out of the irregularity of such verse is due to the shadow or suggestion of regular metre behind. Another kind of free verse—rarer and more difficult (in fact, hardly possible, unless one is born to it)—is the verse which has a particular rhythm for that author, with no suggestion of a familiar metre behind it. Whitman’s is of this type · · · D. H. Lawrence wrote a kind of free verse, but his poems are more notes for poems than poems themselves. Lawrence did not have the necessity to write in this manner, and so there is no excuse for his having written these poems”, Walt Whitman and Modern Poetry (1944).
To Kay Dick, 10 June 1943, rejecting her poems: “The effect is rather of notes for poems or notes for something, rather than of poems, and I find them lacking in form. It is all the more important in free verse to attend to something analogous to musical structure and to attain original and patterned rhythms when rejecting a regular beat and the restrictions of rhyme. I don’t know from what I have seen whether you are really a poet or a prose writer.” TSE used the expression “notes for poems” (rather than poems) in similar letters in 1944, 1945 and 1946. To Miss A. Pratt Barlow, 19 Jan 1943: “If one is adopting a recognised form, then I think the variety is given within its rules and not by simply breaking them. What is needed is rather a more subtle variation of tempo.” The same day, to Miss D. N. Dalglish: “The trouble with free verse is that in giving up the pattern of more formal verse one must find another musical pattern instead.”
To Jill Hillyer, 11 Dec 1946: “All free verse that is good has a certain regularity about it because it always suggests versification from which it is a departure. Conversely the greatest masters of regular verse have always found how to introduce subtle irregularities to give variety. From this point of view, the great master of free verse in English is Milton.”
Offering reassurance to Alexander Langridge Ford, 5 Oct 1934: “I should not expect anybody to accept my ‘philosophy’ at 19; neither did I; at 19 one is still a conservative, and thinks in 19th century terms · · · It is equally undesirable to think oneself a poet and to think that one is not a poet. That is something that we never find out.”
Prufrock and Other Observations
1. Contents in Order of First Publication 2. Composition and Shaping
3. Pound’s Advocacy 4. Title, Dedication and Epigraph to the Volume
1. CONTENTS IN ORDER OF FIRST PUBLICATION
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Poetry June 1915
Preludes Blast 2 July 1915
Rhapsody on a Windy Night Blast 2 July 1915
Portrait of a Lady Others Sept 1915
The “Boston Evening Transcript” Poetry Oct 1915
Aunt Helen Poetry Oct 1915
Cousin Nancy Poetry Oct 1915
Hysteria Catholic Anthology Nov 1915
Conversation Galante Poetry Sept 1916
La Figlia Che Piange Poetry Sept 1916
Mr. Apollinax Poetry Sept 1916
Morning at the Window Poetry Sept 1916
These twelve poems were gathered to form TSE’s first book, “PRUFROCK | AND | OTHER OBSERVATIONS | BY | T. S. ELIOT | THE EGOIST LTD | OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET | LONDON | 1917”. (The title page verso read “PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS | WEST NORWOOD | LONDON”.) The book was advertised in Egoist June 1917 as “now ready”. Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson, 11 June: “Prufrock advance copy just came yesterday.”
In May 1917, thanks to a recommendation (and subsidy) from Pound, TSE had become assistant editor of the journal the Egoist (formerly Freewoman, 1911–12, then New Freewoman, 1913–14). His first contribution, in July 1917, was a review of Pound’s selection of Passages from the Letters of John Butler Yeats; his last, in the final issue, [Nov/]Dec 1919, was Tradition and the Individual Talent II and III. A sheet entitled The Egoist Press Publications (c. 1920) announced The Art of Poetry by TSE as “in preparation”. The book did not appear (see Gallup E6o). The Egoist Press closed in 1924 (Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record 16 Aug 1924).
[Poems I 3–28 · Textual History II 309–36]
2. COMPOSITION AND SHAPING
TSE to Eudo C. Mason, 21 Feb 1936: “J. Alfred Prufrock was written in 1911, but parts of it date from the preceding year. Most of it was written in the summer of 1911 when I was in Munich. The text of 1917, which remains unchanged, does not differ from the original in any way [see Textual History]. I did at one time write a good bit more of it, but these additions I destroyed without their ever being printed [see Prufrock’s Pervigilium in Textual History]. It is by no means true that all of the other poems in the 1917 volume were written after Prufrock. Conversation Galante, for instance, was written in 1909, and all of the more important poems in that volume are earlier than Prufrock, except La Figlia Che Piange, 1912, and two or three short pieces written in 1914 or ’15.” To Edward J. H. Greene, 18 Oct 1939, of Conversation Galante, Portrait of a Lady, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and La Figlia Che Piange: “You are correct · · · in assembling these four poems under the sign of Laforgue.” Reporting this, Greene 23 claimed this had been the order of composition of the four. (Portrait of a Lady appears to have been written concurrently with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock but completed earlier.)
The earliest of the dates TSE gave for any of the poems is 1909, the year of Swinburne’s death and of TSE’s starting to write in the Notebook that he purchased and entitled Inventions of the March Hare (see the beginning of the Textual History for a description). The date became part of the title of Poems 1909–1925 and its successor volumes, although dates of composition were assigned and none of the poems had been published until 1915. The first section of 1925 and its successors was “PRUFROCK | AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS”, bearing the date 1917. When Ethel Stephenson enquired about these dates, TSE replied, 29 Mar 1944: “The date 1917 applied to Prufrock refers not to the particular poem but to my first collected volume which was entitled Prufrock and Other Observations and which did appear in 1917. I have not so far followed the practice in any edition of dating individual poems.”
TSE’s Harvard friend Conrad Aiken was among the first to appreciate his poetry, and wrote to Bab
ette Deutsch, 28 Feb 1921: “I made Prufrock’s acquaintance in 1911—long before its publication (in which I was instrumental, indirectly).” He wrote to TSE [23 Feb 1913]: “What have you been writing—futurist poems? If you have a superfluous copy of The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, any time, here is one who hath an appetite for it. Or anything new.” After publication Aiken wrote to Harriet Monroe, editor of the Chicago magazine Poetry, 4 Sept 1915, saying “I had a copy of it from the first” and claiming that “as Eliot himself was heartlessly indifferent to its fate, it was I who sought publication for it”. Later he recalled taking to London “the typescript of Prufrock, typed by its author with meticulous care on a Blickensderfer which produced only italics, and La Figlia Che Piange, neither of which was I able to sell · · · But Pound, serving tea not so exquisitely among his beautiful Gaudiers [works by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska], recognized Prufrock instantly, and this was the beginning”, March & Tambimuttu eds. 22. No such typescript of La Figlia Che Piange is now known. Aiken suspected that his uncle, Alfred Potter, who worked at Harvard as a librarian, “provided one model for Alfred Prufrock”, Selected Letters of Conrad Aiken, ed. Joseph Killorin (1978) 25.
[Poems I 3–28 · Textual History II 309–36]
Aiken again: “it was I who brought the typescript of Prufrock to London in 1914, in an endeavour to find a publisher for it—it was offered to Harold Monro, at the Poetry Bookshop [publisher of Poetry and Drama, Mar 1913 to Dec 1914], and to Austin Harrison, of The English Review, among others—and it was I who, after it had been summarily rejected by everyone, gave it to Ezra Pound for Poetry, of Chicago. The poem had been written during the previous year, was given to me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I believe was written there · · · Let me add for the record, while I am about it, that Mr. Eliot maintains to this day that on my suggestion a certain passage—now presumably lost—had been dropped from the poem. I can only say that I have no recollection of this, but if so, what a pity!” TLS 3 June 1960. TSE replied, TLS 8 July: “It is quite true that Mr. Aiken tried in vain to place Prufrock for me with a London periodical and it is quite true that it was Mr. Aiken who sent me to Ezra Pound, through whose efforts the poem finally appeared in Poetry, Chicago. Mr. Aiken is wrong only on one point. Prufrock was not written in 1913 but over a period of time in 1910–11, that is to say all that survives in the printed version. I did, I think, in 1912, make some additions to the poem and I am grateful to Mr. Aiken for having perceived at once that the additions were of inferior quality. The suppressed parts, however, have not disappeared from view like the script of The Waste Land; I am pretty sure that I destroyed them at the time, and I have enough recollection of the suppressed verses to remain grateful to Mr. Aiken for advising me to suppress them”, Mr. Eliot’s Progress (1960). By this time, TSE had forgotten that the lines of Prufrock’s Pervigilium were in the March Hare Notebook, which he had last seen in 1922 (for Prufrock’s Pervigilium, see Textual History, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, after 69).
3. POUND’S ADVOCACY
TSE to A. H. Cooke, 18 Sept 1929: “At nineteen, I wrote some verse worth publishing, but I did not get anyone to publish it until I was twenty-eight.”
In 1958, on Pound: “It was owing to his efforts that poems of mine were first published and but for his encouragement I might at an early period have abandoned the writing of poetry altogether” (Introduction to the translation of Pound’s Selected Poems into the Indian language Oriya).
“I had kept my early poems (including Prufrock and others eventually published) in my desk from 1911 to 1915—with the exception of a period when Conrad Aiken endeavoured, without success, to peddle them for me in London. In 1915 (and through Aiken) I met Pound. The result was that Prufrock appeared in Poetry in the summer of that year; and through Pound’s efforts, my first volume was published by the Egoist Press in 1917”, Ezra Pound (1946). TSE toast to Robert Frost, Books across the Sea, June 1957: “Mr. Frost, I’d never heard your name until I came to this country, and I heard it first from Ezra Pound, of all people · · · In time I gathered that your work—or what had appeared at that time—was not in Ezra Pound’s opinion required reading for me · · ·” [Frost:] “It was interesting that both of us come out of the same … the same room, you might say. Wasn’t it in Church Walk that you first saw Ezra Pound? Had he moved then?” [TSE:] “He’d moved to Holland Place Chambers by then.” [Frost:] “· · · I took it one way—and Mr. Eliot took it another way. He took Ezra in charge, and still has him in charge” (transcript by Beatrice Warde, Faber archive).
TSE’s first meeting with Pound actually took place in 1914. Acting as a scout for the Chicago magazine Poetry (begun Oct 1912), Pound wrote to its editor, Harriet Monroe, 22 Sept 1914: “An American called Eliot called this P.M. I think he has some sense tho’ he has not yet sent me any verse.” (Pound’s letters to Monroe were retrospectively dated, many to the day, which suggests reference to postmarked envelopes not now in the Poetry archive. For Pound’s letters on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in particular, see headnote to the poem.)
[Poems I 3–28 · Textual History II 309–36]
Pound wrote again to Monroe, 30 Sept 1914: “I was jolly well right about Eliot. He has sent in the best poem I have yet had or seen from an American. PRAY GOD IT BE NOT A SINGLE AND UNIQUE SUCCESS. He has taken it back to get it ready for the press and you shall have it in a few days. He is the only American I know of who has made what I can call adequate preparation for writing. He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN · · · It is such a comfort to meet a man and not have to tell him to wash his face, wipe his feet, and remember the date (1914) on the calender.” On the same day, Eliot wrote to Aiken: “Pound has been on n’est pas plus aimable, and is going to print Prufrock in Poetry and pay me for it. He wants me to bring out a Vol. after the war.” Pound to Monroe [Oct 1914], enclosing ts2: “Here is the Eliot poem. The most interesting contribution I’ve yet had from an american. Yrs E.P. Hope you will get it in soon.”
Of a visit to Chicago in Dec 1914, John Gould Fletcher wrote: “Miss Monroe seemed frankly disconcerted and bewildered by the explosions of modernistic literary frankness her magazine was already provoking. Especially she seemed to be in awe of Pound. And I recall that she showed me, either now or on my later visit of a week in February, a poem that Pound had just sent in from London, written, as he said, by a young American who was the most intelligent American he had ever met in London, T. S. Eliot. She did not know what to make of the poem · · · and so she asked me for my frank opinion. I read it, and advised her to print it”, Life Is My Song (1937) 191.
Monroe, however, procrastinated for eight months in all. Pound wrote again to her on 31 Jan 1915: “Now as to Eliot: ‘Mr. Prufrock’ does not ‘go off at the end.’ It is a portrait of failure, or of a character which fails, and it would be false art to make it end on a note of triumph. I dislike the paragraph about Hamlet, but it is an early and cherished bit and T. E. won’t give it up, and as it is the only portion of the poem that most readers will like at first reading, I don’t see that it will do much harm. For the rest a portrait satire on futility cant end by turning that quintessence of futility Mr P. into a reformed character breathing out fire and ozone.” 10 Apr: “Do get on with that Eliot.” Then, 20 June: “In being the first American magazine to print Eliot you have scored again though you may not yet think so. He has intelligence and wont get stuck in one hole.” TSE to the New York lawyer and patron John Quinn, 4 Mar 1918: “Personally, I cannot forget the length of time that elapsed before Pound succeeded in persuading Miss Monroe to print Prufrock for me, nor do I forget that she expunged, in another poem, a whole line containing the word ‘foetus’ without asking my permission.” (See note to Mr. Apollinax 7.)
Despite his role as “Foreign Correspondent” of Poetry, Pound let Monroe know on 28 June [1915] that he had submitted poems of his own along with TSE’s Portrait of a Lady to Alfred Kreymborg’s Others in Grantwood, New Jersey. He also m
entioned TSE’s scabrous mock-epic (in the present edition, The Columbiad):
I have also sent a longish poem of Eliot’s to Kreymborg, partly because you dont like him and partly because I want his next batch of stuff in Poetry to be made up exclusively of his newest work. You mark my blossoming word, that young chap will go quite a long way. He and Masters are the best of the b’ilin’. If you think he lacks vigour merely because he happens to have portrayed Mr Prufrock the unvigorous, vous vous trompez. His poem of Christopher Columbus is vigorous, and male, not to say coarse. I think however he may produce something both modest and virile before the end of the chapter.
In a survey of the artistic scene sent to Quinn, 11 Aug 1915, Pound wrote: “The only live wires among the U.S.A. writers that have come to my notice are Orrick Johns and Edgar Lee Masters · · · A young chap named Eliot has gone back to America for a bit. I have more or less discovered him.”
[Poems I 3–28 · Textual History II 309–36]
A month after publication in Poetry of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Pound wrote to Monroe again, mentioning the Catholic Anthology that he was planning (OED “Catholic” 3b: “Having sympathies with, or embracing, all”). July 1915: “I want you to hold two or three pages open for Eliot in either Sept. or Oct. First because I want the stuff out in time for my anthology. Second because he has just married precipitately and cant afford not to be paid for his best things. He has done three small (half page) jems and will have enough for three pages I should think.” Pound fulfilled this promise in a letter ascribed to Aug 1915: “I send also the three jems of Eliot for ‘September’ and a fourth thing Cousin Nancy which may do to fill the second page.”
The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I Page 30
