Editing T. S. Eliot (section)

==="The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"===
{{Main|The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock}}

In 1915, [[Ezra Pound]], overseas editor of ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'' magazine, recommended to [[Harriet Monroe]], the magazine's founder, that she should publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".<ref>Mertens, Richard. [http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0108/features/letter.html "Letter By Letter"] in The University of Chicago Magazine (August 2001). Retrieved 23 April 2007.</ref> Although the character Prufrock seems to be middle-aged, Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only twenty-two. Its now-famous opening lines, comparing the evening sky to "a patient etherised upon a table", were considered shocking and offensive, especially at a time when [[Georgian Poetry]] was hailed for its derivations of the 19th-century [[romanticism|Romantic Poets]].<ref>See, for example, Eliot, T. S. (21 December 2010). ''The Waste Land and Other Poems''. Broadview Press. p. 133. {{ISBN|978-1-77048-267-8}}. Retrieved 27 February 2019. (citing an unsigned review in ''Literary World''. 5 July 1917, vol. lxxxiii, 107.)</ref>

The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of [[Dante]] and refers to a number of literary works, including ''[[Hamlet]]'' and those of the French Symbolists. Its reception in London can be gauged from an unsigned review in ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' on 21 June 1917. "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to ''poetry''."<ref>Waugh, Arthur. [https://www.usask.ca/english/prufrock/recept1.htm "The New Poetry"], ''Quarterly Review'', October 1916, p. 226, citing the ''Times Literary Supplement'' 21 June 1917, no. 805, 299; Wagner, Erica (2001), [https://www.theguardian.com/Archive/Article/0,4273,4250053,00.html "An eruption of fury"], ''The Guardian'', letters to the editor, 4 September 2001. Wagner omits the word "very" from the quote.</ref>