T.S. Eliot on meter and content

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Does anyone know the exact quote and/or citation information for Eliot's famous quote on content and meter--I'm looking for the one where he says that the subject matter of the poem is just a fancy distraction for the audience, covering up what really matters for him--the metrical problems backstage.

― kenchen, Thursday, 23 September 2004 15:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not sure of the exact quotation, but perhaps it is from "Reflections on Vers libre"?

― alexandra s (alexandra s), Thursday, 23 September 2004 15:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I 'm pretty sure there IS a quotation, I distinctly remember reading it but can't find it in that article. Or in Tradition and the Individual Talent. But... you've described what I vaguely recall Eliot saying, and in other places too, that "individual expression" is not the point (for him)

But I think it's more than "metrical problems" solved. It's more that the surface is a come-on that the poems structure either lives up to or doesn't.

― donald, Saturday, 25 September 2004 02:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I glanced through some essays, but I'm not familiar with the quote you're looking for. If you go to www.bartleby.com, click on authors, click on Eliot, then use the search box on the resulting page, perhaps you will find what you seek. Searching from the front page of Bartleby with key words yielded no results for me.

I flipped through my hard copies of various books with Eliot essays with no success.

― Rabin the Cat (Rabin the Cat), Tuesday, 28 September 2004 05:22 (twenty-one years ago)

four years pass...

I realize this is a bit late, but:

In The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, T.S. Eliot goes even further, writing that “The chief use of the ‘meaning’ of a poem, in the ordinary sense, may be (for I am speaking of some kinds of poetry and not all) to satisfy one habit of the reader, to keep his mind diverted and quiet, while the poem does its work upon him: much as the imaginary burglar is always provided with a bit of nice meat for the house-dog. This is a normal situation of which I approve. But the minds of all poets do not work that way; some of them, assuming that there are other minds like their own, become impatient of this ‘meaning’ which seems superfluous, and perceive possibilities of intensity through its elimination…a great deal, in the way of meaning, belongs to prose rather than to poetry” (op. cit. 93).

http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-do-you-mean-by-that-some-thoughts.html

― _Rockist__Scientist_, Friday, 27 February 2009 18:17 (sixteen years ago)

six years pass...

I borrowed a library copy of volume one of this new edition of Eliot's poetry (with some textual corrections), and the supplementary notes take up about 80% of the volume. I wanted to see this because I no longer have any Eliot on my shelves (after discarding my original paperback of his selected poetry many years ago). I'm not sure if I want a volume that includes so much supplementary scholarly material, though I may be interested enough to read through all the notes one time, at least for the "Waste Land," if not for any other poems.

https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/poems-t-s-eliot
http://www.faber.co.uk/9780571238705-t-s-eliot-the-poems-volume-one.html

― _Rudipherous_, Monday, 15 February 2016 23:21 (nine years ago)

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