Visible Poet: T. S. Eliot and Modernist Studies

There are no longer any individuals

or individual poems, only a future

more shattery than ever but still

nearer to us than the present.

Bob Perelman, “From the Front”

In his 1959 monograph The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot, Hugh Kenner wrote that “there has been no more instructive, more coherent, or more distinguished literary career in this century, all of it carried on in the full view of the public, with copious explanations at every stage; and the darkness did not comprehend it” (xii). Alluding to John 1:5, Kenner describes Eliot as one who, despite great publicity and explanation, still needs a little analytical daylight: unlike the Son of Man who declares himself the light of the world, the Eliot of 1959 still awaits the disciple to properly comprehend his word....