The Waste Land

By: T. S. Eliot

Narrated by: Jon Waters

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

The Waste Land is a seminal work of modernist poetry by T.S. Eliot. Written in 1922, this five-part poem is a portrait of its time, a work that expresses the disillusionment of the modernist era and the desperation that the generation of writers of that time was feeling. This poem comes from the area just after the First World War, an era in which the world was in disarray. Many young men had lost their lives or livelihoods from the war, families were torn apart, and the survivors were aimless and disoriented at how to move on. This was the era of literary greats like Ezra Pound, F. Scott. Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and of course, T. S. Eliot. The artists of this time turned to poetry and literature as a way of expressing the widespread spirit of wandering their generation had come to embody. The Waste Land's alternating narrators, character vignettes, references to Eastern religions, and imagery of chaos and disillusionment all come together to create an impactful and insightful work of art. This poem exemplifies a generation of artists and is a masterful work from a great artist at his peak.

Public Domain (P)2021 Spotify Audiobooks

Just don’t

There are far better readings available. Alec Guinness reading The Waste Land is available on You Tube for free and is vastly superior.

Puzzling Erudite

By all accounts this is a masterpiece...I found it hard to stay awake and now have a headache.😔

Relevant

As important as it was 100 years ago. Perhaps even more so now given the challenges we face.

Best Poem, Worst Narration

The narrator’s tone drips with anger, disgust and contempt towards everything at once and nothing in particular. I’ve read this poem for 45 years and heard T. S. Eliot’s recorded recitation. This is a disappointing offering from Audible.

Cardboard

No sense of the text. A superficial reading without
nuance. Terrible German, French, Italian, and Latin.