With its publication in 1922, The Waste Land, by T. S. Eliot (arguably the single most influential long-form poem of the twentieth century), Eliot's reputation began to grow to near-fabled proportions.
By 1929, and for the next three decades, he was the dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world.
Despite its incomprehensible shifts between prophecy and satire, its mind-numbing references to multi-literatures and philosophies, The Waste Land has become a hallmark of modern literature.
Among its famous phrases are: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” and “April is the cruellest month.”
