ESSENTIAL ELIOT

It's always enlightening to hear a poet read his own work, and this set of recordings of T. S. Eliot from 1947 and 1955 may offer more than the readings of many other poets. His work is so intellectually challenging and obscure that it is easy to focus on the content when reading silently. When Eliot reads, the complex rhythms of the poems tug at the listener's attention. Sometimes he sounds as if he's chanting, other times as if he's singing bits of popular songs that drifted through the characters' brains, and others as if he's just having fun with sound itself. While the recording is most useful for bringing life to his complex poem "The Hollow Men," for sheer listening pleasure it's hard to beat "Macavity: the Mystery Cat." G.T.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 07]