Upon receiving the beautiful edition of T. S. Eliot’s Preludes from No Reply Press, I realized that I have never reviewed my cherished Arion Press of The Wasteland. Mostly because even though I cherish that edition and love the poem, I’m very intimidated by it. So, I guess that is why I never “reviewed” it. Maybe this post will be a prelude to giving my thoughts on his famous poem, whether it ends up being in the upcoming No Reply Press edition or the long out of print Arion Press edition or both.
In typical fashion for me, I’ve been jarred out of my procrastination by a range of factors. First is trying to get the review done before the release of the above referenced No Reply Wasteland. And then there is my intention to get something out on The Whole Book Experience before I go off grid for a couple weeks in August to staff Not Back To School Camp. But in my typical reader’s fashion, it was also some random intersections that actually compelled me to my keys: Eliot coming up in the last two books I read. The first was The In-between World of Vikram Lall by Moyez Vassanji, which included an epigraph from the Wasteland: “Who is the third that walks always beside you?” The second was Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s memoir Dreams in a Time of War, which begins “Years later when I read T. S. Eliot’s line that April was the cruelest month, I would recall…” So, without further ado, here we go.
If you are an Eliot fan, I doubt there will ever be a better edition of Preludes. You better just head to the No Reply website and order it. It is still showing available but probably not for long, especially when their edition of The Waste Land hits and the completists out there gobble the rest of them up. This is the second edition of Preludes from No Reply, as Griffin felt he had more to do to realize his vision for the book. While I haven’t seen the first, I’ve heard good things about it. The second edition seems hard to beat so I wouldn’t count on a third. Unless Griffin dreams up another design aspect he wishes he had thought of for the last edition.
This book had me at the paper sides painted by Frêle Sivinaigre especially for the edition. Those shades of blue somehow echo the shades of the blues I feel reading the poems. Or is it a melancholy shade of blue? I also really like the binding style, with the spine cloth tucked under the cover boards instead of on top. The website calls this a German-style, or Bradel style, binding. The Hahnemühle Biblio mould-made paper is scrumptious as usual; it provides a sensuous tactile pleasure with each turn of the page while also embracing the kiss of the type in a visually pleasing way.
In his Prelude, or “prell-yood” to the Preludes, Christopher Ricks concludes that the work “exhibits the relations of literature to the three signal components of life: time present, time past, and time future”
And now
And then
And when
I, for one, can’t help but think of Proust when I read that statement and that quote. Or of what’s going on in the United States when he writes about Eliot’s deep conviction that “the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence,” so that anyone who has approved this idea of order “will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.”
And then the lighting of the lamps.
–Canto I
These poems evoke time over and over again.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,…
— Canto II
For example, how time is different for the one getting ready and the one already ready and waiting, even though the same minutes are passing. Or sitting in lotus position, with the patience of the Buddha, waiting for their beloved to arrive as time seems to drag.
Sitting on the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.
— Canto III
And then there is the timelessness of this statement:
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Canto IV
No matter what happens as the worlds revolve, if humans are around, there will be women tending to the hearths. Not necessarily because they have to or should or could but because they don’t let being successful in other pursuits distract them from what’s important.
It was also interesting to read Ricks’ thoughts about Eliot’s playfulness and also seriousness when it came to words and language. But hey, Eliot was a poet. Words are his canvas.
I’m very happy to have this edition in my library. It joins a growing family of books from No Reply Press and keeps me anticipating future titles.
AVAILABILITY: Limited to 127 copies, numbered 1 through 127. Still available directly from the press as of this writing.
