T S Eliot

This morning I came across the beautifully crafted nonsense poem about Macavity, the Mystery Cat, over at Writer Biographies. Click this link if you’d like to read it. The poem is by T S Eliot and from his Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous musical hit, Cats, was based on this poetry collection.  I’m not familiar with either because I haven’t read the poems or seen the show.

When I was at college, many moons ago, I did study some TSE and couldn’t make a lot of sense of The Waste Land or The Hollow Men, just remember the most famous lines, ie

April is the cruellest month – first line of The Waste Land (also happens to be the month I was born), and the ending of The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Anyway I find I’m really taken with Macavity, which was written before World War II and the very cynical and dour works of the poet that came after that.  I’ll get myself a copy of Practical Cats, and perhaps even get to see the musical.