Editing T. S. Eliot (section)

===''The Waste Land''===
[[File:T.S. Eliot, 1923.JPG|thumb|right|Eliot in 1923 by [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]]]]
{{Main|The Waste Land}}
In October 1922, Eliot published ''The Waste Land'' in ''[[The Criterion]]''. Eliot's dedication to ''il miglior fabbro'' ('the better craftsman') refers to Ezra Pound's significant hand in editing and reshaping the poem from a longer manuscript to the shortened version that appears in publication.<ref name="MillerJames E. Hughes Jr2005">{{cite book|last=Miller| first=James H. Jr. |title=T. S. Eliot: the making of an American poet, 1888–1922|year=2005|publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press|location=University Park, PA|isbn=978-0-271-02681-7|pages=387–388}}</ref>

It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot—his marriage was failing, and both he and Vivienne were suffering from nervous disorders.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ackroyd |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Ackroyd |title=T. S. Eliot |publisher=Simon and Schuster |location=New York |year=1984 |page=113 |ol=24766653M}}</ref> Before the poem's publication as a book in December 1922, Eliot distanced himself from its vision of despair. On 15 November 1922, he wrote to [[Richard Aldington]], saying, "As for ''The Waste Land'', that is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned and I am now feeling toward a new form and style."<ref>''The Letters of T. S. Eliot'', Vol.&nbsp;1, p.&nbsp;596.</ref> 

The poem is often read as a representation of the disillusionment of the post-war generation.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lewis |first1=Pericles |title=The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |page=129 |isbn=9780521828093 |ol=22749928M}}</ref> Dismissing this view, Eliot commented in 1931, "When I wrote a poem called ''The Waste Land'', some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed 'the disillusion of a generation', which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention."<ref>''The Poems of T.S. Eliot, Volume 1: Collected & Uncollected Poems''. Edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue, Faber & Faber, 2015, p. 576</ref>

The poem is known for its disjointed nature due to its usage of allusion and quotation and its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. This structural complexity is one of the reasons that the poem has become a touchstone of [[Modernist poetry in English|modern literature]], a poetic counterpart to a novel published in the same year, [[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]''.<ref>MacCabe, Colin. ''T. S. Eliot''. Tavistock: Northcote House, 2006.</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2024}}

Among its best-known phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and "These fragments I have shored against my ruins".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Tearle |first1=Oliver |title=10 of the Most Famous Lines by T. S. Eliot |url=https://interestingliterature.com/2021/02/ts-eliot-most-famous-lines-quotes/ |website=Interesting Literature |access-date=3 February 2024 |date=4 February 2021}}</ref>