Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.

It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporaryEzra Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.

As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notablyJohn Donne) and the 19th century French symbolist poets (includingBaudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter. His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.

He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

Ash Wednesday (1930)
Burnt Norton (1941)
Collected Poems (1962)
East Coker (1940)
Four Quartets (1943)
Poems (1919)
Poems, 1909-1925 (1925)
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
The Complete Poems and Plays (1952)
The Dry Salvages (1941)
The Waste Land (1922)

Prose

After Strange Gods (1933)
Andrew Marvell (1922)
Dante (1929)
Elizabethan Essays (1934)
Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
For Lancelot Andrews (1928)
John Dryden (1932)
Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1949)
Poetry and Drama (1951)
Religious Drama: Mediaeval and Modern (1954)
The Classics and The Man of Letters (1942)
The Idea of a Christian Society (1940)
The Sacred Wood (1920)
The Three Voices of Poetry (1954)
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
Thoughts After Lambeth (1931)
Tradition and Experimentation in Present-Day Literature (1929)

Drama

A BETTER TOMORROW

Author: Yvonne Warren

I never knew there would be a better tomorrow
But you've come into my life and taken away all my sorrow

My days of sadness are a thing of the past
Because I have found true love at last

My days of emptiness are gone for good
Because you fill a void in my heart that you should

You've opened a window
You've shown me the light
And my love for you will continue to burn bright.

A BLUE STAR IN YOUR EYES

Author: Jo'Lene Tover

On the wings of an eagle,
My love for you flies.
Soaring higher and higher,
And touching the skies.

I reached up above,
And pulled a star from the sky.
To place it within,
Your precious minds eye.

To dwell there forever,
As my love for you.
On the wings of our love,
Enduring and true.

I honor you my darling,
With all that I am.
Please darling please,
Will you be my man?

There are so many things,
My heart wants to say.
I love you sweetheart,
There is no other way.

A CUTE POEM FOR A CUTE GIRL

Author: Anonimous

You changed my world with a blink of an eye
That is something that I can not deny
You put my soul from worst to best
That is why I treasure you my dearest Marites

You just don't know what you have done for me
You even pushed me to the best that I can be
You really are an angel sent from above
To take care of me and shower with love

When I'm with you I will not cry even a single a tear
And your touch have chased away all of my fear
You have given me a life that I could live worthwhile
It is even better everytime you smile

It so magical those things you've made
To bring back my faith that almost fade
Now my life is a dream come true
It all began when I was loved by you

Now I have found what I am looking for
It's you and your love and nothing more
Co'z you have given me this feeling of contentment
In my life something I've never felt

I wish I could talk 'til the end of day
But now I'm running out of things to say
So I'll end by the line you already know
"I LOVE YOU" more than what I could show