This book starts from the premise that The Waste Land demands close reading. The appearance of the poem in 1922 started a critical debate that continues to this day. Reviewers and critics, whether favourable or hostile, have written about it in terms of theme, form and content. Many have considered it formless and fragmented, or have attempted to find coherence in it with assumptions about unity and closed form, trying to fix the text, to locate hidden narratives, spiritual quests, or allegories of salvation. However, Gareth Reeves contends that the poem is resolutely open-ended, a view supported by recent developments in reader-response criticism and reception theory. He seeks to present a close reading that avoids formalistic assumptions, allusion hunting, paraphrase and thematic treatment. The aim of this study is to draw readers into the text so that they can experience it anew. Gareth Reeves argues that its meaning comes largely from the way the poetry sounds, and his reading therefore concentrates on all the ways of sounding: syntax, lineation, intonation. It also brings out the presence of the muted voices of wronged women in a work often branded as misogynistic.

T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land

Education & Teaching

Reeves, Gareth

Schools & Teaching

Harvester/Wheatsheaf

Auden, MacNeice, Spender: The Thirties Poetry

Through close analysis of the major poems written during the 1930s by W.H.Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, this study highlights the often creative quarrels in their work between a sense of poetry as autonomous art and an anti-modernist desire to communicate. This book does not allow the poetry to be subsumed within some impersonal historical "Zeitgeist", instead it concentrates on the issue of poetic achievement, focusing an individual poems. Michael O'Neill is the author of "The Human Mind's Imaginings" and "Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Literary Life" and Gareth Reeves is the author of "T.S.Eliot, A Virgilian Poet".

Auden, Macneice, Spender: The Thirties Poetry

Literature & Fiction

O'Neill, Michael

Poetry

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

Hickman, Neil

History & Criticism

Palgrave HE UK

This work argues that although "The Waste Land" demands close reading, the spirit of the old New Criticism works with inappropriate assumptions about unity and closed form. Many critics have tried to fix the text, to find hidden narratives and plots, spiritual guests and allegories of salvation. Instead, this reading sees the poem as resolutely open-ended, supporting this view with recent developments in Reader-Response criticism and Reception Theory. The study focuses on the way poetry sounds (or does not sound, cannot be sounded). It concentrates on syntax, lineation and intonation. It also brings out the presence of the muted voices of wronged women in a work often called misogynistic.

T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land (Critical Studies of Key Texts)

Routledge

T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land

Arguing that Eliot's work is significantly Virgilian, Gareth Reeves throws new light on his poetry. Reeves brings out the important distinction between the Christianized version of Virgil in Eliot's later poetry and plays, and the hitherto neglected apocalyptic Virgil behind 'The Waste Land.'

T. S. Eliot: A Virgilian Poet

United States

Made up of humorous and poignant poems, this collection meditates upon family, loss, and the landscape of memory. A wonderfully various and mature compilation, it also includes poems of quasi-dramatic monologues in the voice of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Those interested in contemporary poetry and the poetry of music will appreciate this compilation.

To Hell with Paradise: New and Selected Poems

Carcanet Press Ltd.

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Books by Reeves, Gareth