T.S. Eliot was an American who found himself at home in England and in the English tradition. This course, led by Michael Braziller, publisher of Persea Books, and featuring guest poet Anne Stevenson, also an American expatriate in England, will examine T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," with a particular focus on the "East Coker" section. Much of the appeal of Eliot's poetry lies in his music and in the argument with himself that runs throughout his poems. After the introductory stanza of "East Coker," the emphasis falls on the poet's "intolerable wrestle/ With words and meaning" in which he attempts to say the unsayable. In the course of his struggle, Eliot reverses the first sentence, "In my beginning is my end," to arrive at the last, "In my end is my beginning." In addition to exploring the music and meaning of Eliot's "Four Quartets," the evening will feature an ample reading of Stevenson's own poems.

No prior registration or fee is required. To view the poem, please click on the links below. Please bring a printed copy to the class. Copies of the poem will not be provided at the event.

Eliot Poem (PDF)
Eliot Poem (Word)

Anne Stevenson, who Andrew Motion called "one of the most remarkable poetic voices to have emerged on either side of the Atlantic in the last fifty years," was born in England of American parents in 1933, and brought up in New England and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her many books of poems include Reversals, Correspondences, The Fiction-Makers, Stone Milk, and Poems 1955-2005. She is also the author of Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath and, most recently, Five Looks at Elizabeth Bishop. In 2007 she received The Neglected Masters Award from the Poetry Foundation of America, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation, and the Aiken Taylor Award from the University of the South. Her Selected Poems, with an introduction by Andrew Motion, was published in 2008 as part of the American Poets Project by The Library of America.